The tourist girl: Turkey: Bodrum for one day

"Just living is not enough... one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower."

Hans Christian Andersen

At the end of May 2015, I went on summer holiday to the Greece Island Kos. I could see the Turkish coast from Kos, so jumped on the boat and went to Bodrum for one day. As a Turkish girl who lives in the Netherlands, it was great to be back in my own country.

The boat left in the morning, well on holidays i'm not used to get up early. However, I was smart enough not to party the night before. So gladly I was able to woke up, dress up and even had a nice breakfast before getting up on the boat.

We are living in the beginning of March 2016 now, but I still can remember the sweet salty fragrance of the sea. It was around 29 degrees celsius but slightly cold in the wind created by the speed of the boat. No matter the chilly breeze, I definitely enjoyed at the upper front of the boat. With my camera around my neck, I was ready to enter Turkey.

I'm not really a nationalist, still I shiver when I see a big Turkish flag with the picture of the once great leader of Turkey, Ataturk. He was the man that made Turkey a modern country where women were able to move and think as individuals again. He distinguished Turkey from the arabic countries we know today. Glad that he wrote history, because I can't imagine a Turkey where I can't move and act as I want. I could dig deeper in the political situation happening now, but maybe I will come back on this part later on a post.

My first intuition to do was to eat. Food from the kitchen I love, food from the kitchen I grew up with. I know, it's not one of the healthiest kitchens 'always' but it's definitely of good taste. There are a lot of Turkish people living in the Netherlands who opened (fast-food) restaurants.

Typical street food as doner, rotary meat, are findable in every corner here, but trust me it has nothing to do with the real taste as one can find in Turkey. They put garlic sauce in everything you can imagine! However, we didn't ate doner but we ate tantuni. Tantuni, is a dish made of small pieces of lambs wrapped with its own special sauce made of herbs and butter.

Later we also ate kusbasi pide, this again are small pieces of meat made with eggs tomatoes on dough in a stone oven. The funny part is, I ordered this dish here in Holland and yes as you can guess they delivered it with garlic sauce. Of course I didn't put garlic sauce on it.

Unfortunately, I didn't made pictures of the food so if you are curious use google images!

After the belly was filled with some piece of heaven, we took the road up the hill to the antique theatre of Bodrum. According to the website gumbet-bodrum :

"The 4th century (B.C.) Antique Theatre of Bodrum, also known as Amphitheatre is also one of the bets sights located in central Bodrum, 3 km. from Gumbet, in central Bodrum, 10 minutes by Dolmus.

The Antique Theatre has a beautiful aura and panoramic views of the Bodrum peninsula. It has a capacity of about 13.000 guests. It is one of the best preserved structures of the ancient Halikarnassus."

Well it was around half an hour walking, but definitely worth it. The positive part of walking instead of taking a dolmus, yellow mini busses used for transfer by locals also known as flying cars by children, was the nature and the great view on our way.

And we missed the crowd of tourists!

Back in the centre, we enjoyed more food, walked around the city drank some turkish tea and took the boat back to Kos.

On our way back to the boat the great dog pack of golden retrievers attracted directly my attention. This man had around 5/6 golden retrievers all on one leash!
It reminded me of my own dog Alex, that passed away at the age of 2 in November 2014. What I didn't knew then was that my dog currently and his brother, my mother's dog, were in the belly of their mom.