there’s nothing a bit of fresh breeze won’t cure

fethiye fish market dinner

so I’ve kinda done this out of order, but who cares. this dinner is worthy of its own blog post, regardless of where it is date-wise.

so the night before we were due to get on the boat for the sailing experience, our tour guide wanted to take us to the local market for dinner. when asked what the fuss was, he basically said you choose your fish and then you cook it. the tour guide was turkish, and while his english was very good, we all had moments of “wait…. what?” so when he implied we were cooking our own dinner, I was a little excited. but that’s not what it was, and probably just as well.

so you go into this market, and in the centre there’s a huge square-ish type central market where all the days catch is, and each fishmonger has their own section. surrounding this central area of just general fish, were about 8-10 restaurants; all boasting specials like “your fish, plus salad and bread = 10 lira. which is approximately $5.50au. so after you spend maybe 18 lira on fish, the most incredible fresh dinner costs a grand total of maybe $20au, if you splurge on beer and cider. if you tried to eat a whole wild sea bass, some prawns, a really generous salad, delicious fresh cooked flat bread and a beer at home, say at st kilda… there’s no way it would only be 20 bucks.

just a little selection of the days catch

my choice

oh lordy, so good

I sailed the wild sea, climbed up a tall mountain

sailing the turquoise sea

living the dream is probably what you’d say when I tell you that I spent two days on a sail boat spending long leisurely days out in the crystal clearly turquoise waters of the mediterranean sea off turkey near a place called fethiye.
and it truly was.


a gorgeous street in fethiye

the ultimate postcard “wish you were here” photo

I spent two nights on this boat, with my tour group, had our meals cooked for us, went out during the day to ‘park’ at some picturesque location where the ultra blue water was an ultimate backdrop for the stunningly tall and almost out of place mountains in the distance, have a swim, eat lunch, have another swim, bathe in the sunshine like lizards coming out of hibernation, read, snooze, eat dinner, dance on the deck and then we’d dock at the marina of an evening to sleep on the top deck of the boat. talk about living the dream!

beautiful endless blue

view from half way up to simena castle

just after nearly having a coronary after walking up so many old rock steps in 37dg heat, only made it half way

only slightly ruined by the fact I managed to get swimmers ear a few days earlier after swimming at ölüdeniz – haven’t swam in such a long time and obviously did way too many duck dives. having been a big swimmer back in my hey day and having had swimmers ear more times than I can count, it was pretty obvious what it was. so I went to the pharmacist to ask for ear drops and, in his small amount of english, he asked me “for block or for pain?” for pain I answered, and he wrote the dose on the box… “3×3 drops”.

imagine if pharmacists at home actually did that. well, they probably do, but too many people go to hospital for stupid things like an ear ache or a tooth ache, when pharmacists go through as many years of training as I did (maybe more, I dunno), surely they can hand out medical advice for drugs… surely better than what some gp’s!

totally loved this experience. we didn’t shower for two and a half days but who needs showers when you can jump into the mediterranean to ‘bathe’? my idea of absolute bliss.. the sun, salt, sand, sweat and brown skin made for two very memorable days out at sea; even if I still had sea legs for two days afterwards!