Life without a GPS...

Thursday, May 03, 2012

Hello!

Well, we have had quite a day, and no mistake! Emmy, our dependable GPS navigator, has stopped working! Whew – not a good thing, that’s for sure!

We were up and out of the hotel by about 9 a.m. for the 3 hour drive to Fethiye. Something that we hadn’t realized when I was putting the trip together, was that Turkey is indeed a very beautiful and mountainous country! We had seen snow-capped peaks on our way to Pamukkale and Aphrodiasis, but we hadn’t reckoned on having to cross them to get back down to the coast.

At any rate, as we were driving through the thriving city of Denizli, Emmy just stopped – flat – and that suddenly – talk about an awful feeling…There is a line in the movie “Red Planet” where one of the astronauts to Mars talks about learning to navigate from the stars from his grandfather, who said something like “Any man who puts his life on the line with a bunch of batteries is an idiot”…now I know what he meant! So…back to the paper maps…UGH!

Fortunately, we had invested in what is purported to be the best Turkish atlas published, but that still didn’t have enough detail for us to get into big cities. We drove through the mountains – absolutely incredible; very reminiscent of the Sierras! As we made our way down to the coast. We entered Fethiye and basically managed to get to the coast road, where we traveled first north up the road, and then when that didn’t look promising, back south and back into the heart of town, looking for the hotel. (Beautiful single family homes on the north end of town; just lovely!) Finally stopped at a beach-side café, and R went in to ask about our hotel. Turns out that we needed to drive to the south end of town – and voila! Yacht Classic Hotel!

Parking was more than a bit dicey, as it was down quite a slope, so I left the car at the curb and we unloaded luggage. Our room was ready – 206 – and it is an absolute stunner! We are VERY pleased with our selection! (Thank you, Booking.com!) We have a sea-facing balcony room – on the 2nd floor. Our wrap-around balcony also has a view to the side; plenty of room and privacy; it’s GREAT! We also have television that we can really watch! (Our hotel in Pamukkale had BBCWorld, and then a few random channels in French, German, Italian and Turkish.) Now we have EUROSPORT! Who could ask for more? I unpacked and organized, as R tried to contact Garmin about the GPS. He is willing to do the entire trip without, but I have grown very accustomed to Emmy and don’t like that idea at all…we’ll see what happens!

Then down to lunch at the hotel, harbor side. R had a cheese salad which he very much enjoyed, and I had a home-made hamburger with French fries…excellent! All washed down with nice glasses of house white wine. We had thought of going to the Museum in Fethiye, but by the time we got back upstairs, the siren call of a nap was just too much to resist…woke up three hours later – do hope we’ll sleep tonight!

So…for the next several days we’ll be staying here in Fethiye and making daily jaunts out to look at ruins … let’s only hope we can find them! Dinner tonight here at the hotel – making for a very nice and easy kind of vacation day!

More later!

Much love,
m
xxx