Bodrum is a cool tourist city on the coast of Turkey. It was our first stop on a road trip through that country. My brother @doctorcrypto had met up with me in Greece and we took a ferry overnight to Turkey. We only spent one night in Bodrum since we were a little bit pressed for time. My brother was flying out of Istanbul in about 7 days, and we had a lot of country to get through.
Looking through my photos, I don't have very many of them for the stops that we made on this trip. I think I'm going to have to ask @doctorcrypto if I can use some of his photos for the upcoming posts. I only have 25 photos of Bodrum and it looks like half of them were taken from the rooftop above.
I think the issue that I have is that I don't take as many photos when I'm traveling with other people. One part is not wanting to slow the other person down. When left to my own devices, I will stop every 30 seconds and take a photo. Another part of it is I feel less of a need to capture everything in order to share it. I'm already sharing it. Anyways, this post will be lighter on photos than normal.
The ferry ride from Santorini to Bodrum was a rough one. The ferry left after midnight and traveled through the night. I've never been able to sleep in planes, trains, buses, or cars. And it turns out that I can't sleep on boats either.
As the sun began to rise, we had to change boats on the island of Kos. My brother and I found a store to buy some snacks, then we had to figure out how to find a boat to Turkey.
There was some sort of issue with the boats to Turkey and my brother and I had to do some fenagling to get on the second boat.
The trip from Kos to Bodrum was a short one and before we knew it, we were setting foot in Asia for the first time in our lives. I would end up visiting 5 out of 7 continents on my trip and it was nice to cross one of them off my list.
Getting through Customs & Immigration in Bodrum took a while, but it was relatively painless. We had our visas and they stamped our passports and we were free to explore a new country and a new continent.
The first thing we needed to do was find a hotel. I don't remember if I'd pre-booked a room or not. In Spain I had learned a costly lesson about booking rooms without being sure of my transportation. I had booked a room but the busses weren't running so I was charged for a room that I didn't use. I don't know if we had booked something or found a room after we arrived. I do remember wandering through a market area close to the port and feeling like I was in a different world.
We walked through the hot city and eventually found a room. After getting cleaned up and dropping off our gear, we took some photos from the roof of the hotel. This is what I have marked on my map, but there are 3 hotels right there. I'm not sure which one was ours.
From the roof of our hotel, we could see the bay and a big fortress. It was a beautiful view.
@doctorcrypto and I walked down to the waterfront and checked with places to rent a car. We found one and secured our car reservation for the next morning. It was going to be expensive to rent the car for 7 days and drop it off in Istanbul, but it wasn't too far out of our budget.
Along the waterfront, we were swarmed by touts trying to attract us to different restaurants. At first we tried to be polite, but they were super aggressive and wouldn't take no for an answer. They kept shoving menus in our faces as we tried to walk. We found the best method to deal with them was to completely ignore them and never make eye contact. Out of spite, we went to the one restaurant that didn't have a tout in front of it.
Once we found a place, the food, beer, and view were great.
After the sun went down we went to a bar/night club. The photo is terrible, but I've got so few photos of Bodrum that I'm including it. The bar had a cool seating area out on the water with a great view of the fortress and boats. We didn't spend a whole lot of time there, just enough for a couple of beers.
After the bar, we went in search of the world's best late-night food, doner kebab. We were in the land that created doner kebab and it was glorious! Though, I must admit, I think the doner in Germany is better. Still, there's something great about having the genuine article. We found a particular vendor with a unique one. It had vegetables mixed in on the rotating meat stick. It was the best kebab that I had in Turkey!
We returned to our room and went to sleep. In the morning we picked up our car and hit the road. We didn't have a plan other than get to Istanbul within 7 days. There were a few places that we'd heard of from tourist websites, but we weren't sure if we'd see them.
Stay tuned for the next post as @doctorcrypto and I road trip through Turkey!