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Published: August 2nd 2006
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I will spend three nights and two days in Bodrum, a heavy duty coastal resort town with yachts to rival the French Riviera, more shopping than buyers and more sunburned tourists than sunprotection. I really believe there are more tourists here than local Turks. I had a conversation wıth the hotel clerk this mornıng. He is here for the summer only while the tourists and money are here. The rest of the year he is a student in Istanbul.
Yesterday I toured the impressive Crusader Castle. I don't know how much is original and how much has been restored. There is no mention in Lonely Plant, which usually mentions these thıngs. It's quıte likely it's all original and very well preserved. On this site is also the famous Underwater Archeology Museum. The museum is not underwater. They don't give us a snorkel and fins to visit. Rather, all the items in the museum were found underwater, mostly pots and amphorae from the Greek and Roman times. The boats have mostly decayed but their cargo of pots survived. The grounds are especially attractive with palm trees everywhere and with the castle walls draped in Bougenvillea.
Then I walked to the
Mausoleum of Halicarnasus. This Wonder of the Ancient World is in complete ruins, only broken columns and rubble. But with some archeology they have recontructed the grounds, but not the actual Mausoleum. A small display shows what the Mausoleum probably looked like. Apparantly it stood for nearly 2000 years until pirates and crusaders worked their magıc and turned it into a heap of stones.
Today, I took a boat cruise around the bay near Bodrum. This time, I opted for a traditional Turkish yatch, a gulet. The yacht has a mast, but no sails, only an inboard motor to get us everywhere. There were five stops, all for swımmıng. I jumped into the crystal clear water. The depth when we anchored was usually about 10 meters and I could see the bottom, heavily refracted but clearly laid wıth stones. The water was cooler than I expected, cooler than my dunk in Fethiye, last Saturday. There were only about 12 of us on this trip, far fewer than the trip I took in Fethiye. Lunch was cooked for us. Of course, the weather was great. I haven't seen a cloud in weeks. And it is always cooler on the water than in the city on a hot day. There were a few other yachts taking the same trip around the bay, so I have lots of photos of blue water and yachts. It was a good day, quite relaxing and beautiful to watch as we slowly motored around the bay. A nice way to spend 7 hours.
Bodrum is the most expensive of the three Turkish towns I have visited. Many tourists here pushing up prices. But I wonder if I had been here last year if it would be cheaper? Turkey has just dropped 6 zeroes from its currency. Before last year, the joke was that everyone in Turkey was a millionaire. What last year cost 10 milliom lira now should cost 10 lira. But I wonder how many merchants say, "if it should cost 10 lira, then who is going to notice if we add just another 5 lira?" And many places just advertise their merchandise in Euros or UK Pounds. All this drives up prices. Only tourists could afford to live in Bodrum. Still, my very nice hotel is costing me 43 Canadian dollars per night and I can eat a good dinner for 15 Canadian dollars. The boat trip was about 25 Canadian Dollars.
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