Full day in Antalya, Turkey

We had a full day in Antalya, the 5th largest city in Turkey. It is a resort town next to the Mediterranean, but our hotel, the Mamara Antalya Hotel, was a little further back from the seaside, up on a cliff. It was interesting to note that guests had to take an elevator to get down to a rocky area in order to swim in the sea. By the time we learned about this, the elevator had closed for the day.

I signed up for a ride on a wooden boat, followed by a city tour. After breakfast, we got on our bus to head to the town center. There was quite a bit of traffic on the road.

The bus had to park in a garage at the top of the city center. We walked past a big statute of Attaturk on a horse (first photo above), and headed to an elevator to get down to sea level. Below are some shots from the top, overlooking tops of houses and the water.

At the bottom, we passed restaurants and stores as we walked along the water to a row of wooden boats;

...and boarded this boat for our tour.

It was nice to be on the water, but there was not as much to see as I expected. However the cliffs were interesting.

The surprise was around the corner, where we saw the huge waterfalls right off the city with high rise buildings in the background. These are the Duden Waterfalls. Of course we took a lot of photos here. We could see people observing the falls from the top, near a railing.

We returned to the pier after about an hour, then took the same elevator (blue column in the background of the 2nd photo below) back up to the city center.

We had lunch in the pedestrian streets where there were a lot of shops and restaurants. We orderd grilled fish (very good) and spicy adana kebab (rather salty) along with some appetizers.

After lunch, we got back on the bus to visit the Antalya Archeological Museum. Lots of history and artifacts there, the statutes of emperors and gods were very impressive. Metin, our tour manager narrated the stories behind some of the well known figures like Hercules, Hera, Artemis but I zonked out from information overload although I could admire the visuals.

We got back on the bus, drove around the city, took photos of Hadrian's Gate from the bus (nobody had the energy to get down to view it). It was a relief to get back to the hotel with a few hours to spare before dinner.

I even had time to swim a few laps in the very big pool, but the water was cold. I gave up, relaxed on the pool chair and read on my Kindle before dinner.