Leaving Ourselves Behind

Actually, they’re here. Feithye has been attracting British tourists for decades with its crystal waters, local ruins, cheap beer and sports bars broadcasting British football games. Between 5,000 and 7,000 British expats live in this town of just over 177,000, and many, many more arrive each year for their annual holiday. Their impact is so great that a number of restaurants offer “English Breakfasts” and Yorkshire tea.

We witnessed a great deal of affection between the Brits and the Turks. Maggie and Roger, a couple we met at our hotel, have been coming to Feithye for 40 years and during that time have made a number of Turkish friends and even been invited to their kids’ weddings.

We are not actually staying right in Feithye; we unwittingly booked a hotel about 4 km. out of Old Town in the little town of Calis. It has worked out very well, as we are just two blocks away from this 4 km. boardwalk.

This is our local beach.

This is our beach at sunset.

All too often seaside restaurants can be over-priced and mediocre, but it was not the case here. Dining out was extremely reasonable and the food delicious and varied.

This mezze platter was typical.

If you have any gluten issues, you might be struggling to avoid bread in Turkiye. This pufferfish arrived on our table last night, and damned if we didn’t eat the whole thing.

A shot of Stephen at one of our favourite restaurants. He just got a fresh hair cut and beard trim “Turkish style”. Not only did the “4 on the top, 2 on the sides” make him feel a lot more presentable, but his barber tackled his nose hairs and took a torch to burn off the stray hairs springing from his ears!

We have a car and could have driven into Feithye in less than 10 minutes, but we couldn’t resist taking the water taxi that runs back and forth every half hour; travelling first through the narrow channel into the open sea. It takes about 25 minutes and drops you right downtown, with no fussing about finding a parking spot.

It took a few minutes to get our bearings in Old Town Feithye. This is not a larger version of Kas; it is a small city that sprawls out from the core and has suffered a number of earthquakes over the years. Much of the architecture is newer and therefore far less picturesque than Kas, but we did spend a good part of the day wandering about and founds lots to enjoy.

We climbed up to the top of the city to see the Amyntas Rock Tombs, carved by the Lycians in the 4th century. As is always the case when I see ancient ruins, I wonder about the precision of the carving and how on earth it was accomplished, or in Stephen’s words, ” how many people died creating this?”

We had the good fortune to visit the ghost town of Kayakoy, formerly known as Leivissi when the Greeks lived there. This town, about a half-hour drive from Feithye, was once a prosperous town populated by both Greek Christians and Turk Muslims, who lived together harmoniously.

The town was built between the 18th century into the 19th century and had a population of over 6000 people. However, between the massacre of Greeks during WW11 and the forced expulsion of Greeks in 1923, this town was almost entirely depopulated.

The Muslims who were also expelled from Greece back to Turkey during that period were apparently reluctant to move into the town; fearful of the ghosts of the massacred Greeks.

Karakoy became abandoned and has become a sort of living museum of over 500 buildings.

This is a view of the town from the main road.

The town is remarkably well-preserved, but would be even more intact but for the wholesale pillaging of wood, ceramic and any removable objects over the years.

One of the churches in the town.

As we walked around the town, it felt incredibly tragic to imagine the plight of the Greeks. This would have been the only home many of them had ever known and to be forced to move back to their “country”, leaving everything behind feels unspeakable.

I wondered how old this tree was and if it had been in this laneway before the expulsion.

The government has plans for a partial restoration of the town. A small number of buildings have been restored and are operating as shops and restaurants.

We stopped by a small leather shop to talk to the lady inside. She pointed out the
“Hollywood Shoes“, as she called them.

These shoes (not for sale) were used in movies such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Gladiator. They are created from a 670-year-old Ottoman model of shoe and come with the following quite charming instructions.

Shoes are made from natural leather.
First, wait a minute, then normal water.
Bucket full of water out of.
Dressed two hours outside.
Shoes your feet will take the format.
Is very comfortable.
Two hours after the rest.
Olive oil will creep out on the next day.
You can easily walk out a lot of olive oil every month.

Since I would much rather contemplate the care and feeding of leather shoes than the reality of humanity’s boundless capacity for hatred, let’s move on to paragliding.

About 15 minutes away from Kayakoy lies the quite incredible engineering feat of the Babadag Teleferik. The construction began in 2004, was delayed until 2017, and then working with a Swiss cable car company, the project began in earnest.

Statistics – 58 cable cars, 202 chair lifts, four stations, three restaurants – do not begin to express the magnitude of this project. It takes 29 minutes to ride the cable car up to the third station, at 1700 metres. To ride from 1700 to 1900 metres, you take a chair lift.

This is the cable car, and we had one all to ourselves, but none of my photos taken from the cable car turned out well, as the plexiglass was scratched and a bit foggy.

Just take my word for it that the uber-steep, twisty dirt road that snaked up the mountain just below our cable car path would be a terrifying alternative to getting either up or down this mountain.
Once on top, the view was mind-blowing.

There are two launching sites for paragliding, and during our time there, we must have seen dozens go by; some of them seemingly close enough to reach out and touch. Possibly in some other lifetime, I would be able to hang onto a tandem guide and “fly like a bird”. It looks so beautiful and seems such a shame to miss that experience.

And…the crazy experience that is an inevitable part of travel – you are looking for one thing and get another. When we asked our guy at the hotel about a great beach – he pointed out one about a half hour away. “But don’t go to Sea Me, it is very expensive and full of influencers.”

Impressed that a) he was watching out for our wallet and b) he shares our distaste for influencers, we drove straight to his recommended beach club, only to find it closed for the season.
So guess where we ended up? Sea Me, the beach club that charges $60 for sunbeds, and pounds a maddening and generic base line beat. Since we already looked like grandparents who had crashed the party, I could not bring myself to ask them to turn it down, so I sat on my sunbed and fumed until common sense took hold.

This was our view and our swims were quite lovely and our artisan pizza was delicious.

And there we are – another turn on our Turkish tour. Next up is Ephesus, the well-preserved ancient city that was founded in the 11th century B.C.