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Luxury Hotel Pool

Our hope on arriving in Tekirova was that we would find a nice beach hotel from which to explore the archeological sites nearby. Gerry was our point man and he found us a 4-star resort, seen in the photo, negotiated an acceptable all-inclusive rate, and so we looked forward to three or four days of relative luxury. Imagine therefore our disappointment to find that this mostly German-patronized hotel served awful buffet food and even worse, undrinkable wine. Since the weather was far too cold for us to take advantage of the lovely pool and the room was nothing special, we cut our losses and decamped to a much smaller but much friendlier hotel in town.

Hotel Essos

The Hotel Essos also had a pool and also offered meals, but their season hadn't started officially and so the pool was empty and the cook hadn't yet arrived. When we first asked for a room, they didn't quite know what to do with us and told us they were closed. But when we explained that all we wanted was a room without meals at a decent price, they couldn't turn down such easy money and quickly came to a mutually satisfactory agreement and we moved right in. Our room was large and bright and spotlessly clean, had cable TV that included BBC World and was within less than a block of a dozen nice restaurants just dieing for our business. According to one restaurant owner, very few of the package tourists in their all-inclusive resorts ever ate in the local restaurants.

The Bay next to Tekirova

We spent two more nights in Tekirova, spending a day visiting Phaselis and getting close to Olympos, although we didn't actually get to see the site itself. And then we spent a day hiking along the Lycian Way just outside of Tekirova and even got ourselves tempted into dipping our toes into the Mediterranean. It was icy!