Bodrum

After we left Jesse's group and, the next day, Chris' parents, Chris and I took the next two days to get from Antalya, where we left the group, to go to Bodrum to meet my family. After a couple of days traveling on a bus, and excited to see my family, I was more than thrilled to find that the hotel I had booked us in, the Munahan, was as fabulous as it looked on their website. This is a photo of it from their roofdeck:
Unfortunately, one of the rooms we had reserved was double booked, so the put my parents in a suite at no extra cost...It was a rough day :)

The pool at the hotel was amazing, rather than being concrete, it looked as though it was a pond, with rocks as the edges. As we lay on the chaise lounges next to the pool, the people who worked at the hotel made sure we had constantly filled places of ice cold fruit (see, the fruit thing never ends!) and bottles of water. The Turkish breakfast is always a variation on the same theme: Bread, cheese, honey, butter, olives, tomatoes, and either coffee or tea. You wouldn't think it could vary too much, but at the Munahan, it was superb. The bread toasted just right, enough variety with the cheese, and the added touch of walnuts, which were great drizzled with honey.

Not to rave toooo much about the hotel, but the owners also were able to set us up with everything we needed, including a fish dinner literally ON the water. In the photo of us at the dinner table, our table and chairs are in the sand. The name of the restaurant was Balkci.com.tr, which I thought was odd, but the food was fantastic, and as the Munahan owner (a friend of the restaurant owner) called and requested, they treated us like royalty. The hotel owner also booked us on a sailing trip around Bodrum for the next day. Bodrum is a huge party town and there are tons of 'party boats' that will take you out, but you are like one of a pile of ants loaded onto these boats. Knowing my parents wouldn't be too fond of that, we were able to get onto this little (pretty run down looking) boat with our Captain (Osman, i think) which was also a music composer and gave us all cassette tapes of his music to take home. At the end of the trip, when I asked my parents and Maryn about their favorite experience, they all mentioned this day on the boat. Maryn was also a big fan of Bodrum because it seems as though the town specialty is knockoff bags and watches. She bought a Gucci fake the first night we were there, and a few more after that! I have a great picture of how they advertise these "genuine fakes" but I'll have to put it in the next post.

This sunset was seen from the roofdeck at the Munahan.











Below: The same evening...The same roofdeck.