Are THINGS about to CHANGE ? Van Life South to BODRUM Turkey
Go go go! Thank you very much Epic fail of the pre-flight checklist! Goats on the road Some good news this morning! Look how blue that water is! That is a view from the van door. We're Marianne and Chris and we've been travelling full time since May 2018. We must be insane! Whilst attempting to drive around the world in Trudy our home on wheels this happened! All British travellers abroad are advised, advised to return now. As borders closed around us, we decided to wait it out in Turkey until we were able to continue our adventure East.
Oh we could see our breath! Good morning, we've woken up here at Attila's hostel just near Ephesus, I just love the sky this time in the morning, it always looks so nice with the sun just starting to come up. It's been a lovely spot, we've had a really good time here, very calm nice and relaxed. Good morning he's excited to see you this morning! What's funny is every morning when the the call to prayer starts you can hear the dogs around, they all start howling, which is absolutely hilarious. We used to have a dog Reggie who used to howl every time the phone went off.
Hello! Today we're going to be heading a little bit further South but first, there's a few things we need to do to get ready for the road. Bye So we've just stopped at the local supermarket to buy a few bits, just to stock up after the weekend ..... toilet paper! Quick shop, we're stocked up, I couldn't resist buying the stuff for spagetti bolognese, I'm really craving a bit of spag bol, we used to have it every week at home, so yeah, I'm gonna cook spagetti bolognese in the van. I've got some ice cream! i've i found ice cream, we got a bit of everything. We literally didn't resist anything today, never shop when you're hungry .... that's the motto of that story! Because I'm starving.
Go go go, all clear, what is that coming down the road? ..... oh it's a forklift truck, of course it is on the wrong side of the road!! They're naughty! Lots of people have been saying you've missed here, you've missed it, we're not going to be able to do it all, but we will share as much of it as we can. But it's nice to get all the recommendations and we've got most of them pinned on a map, so we're flying around trying to see as many of them as possible. Sorry that is me, Marianne forgot to close the fridge! I was so excited to get going, holy moly! I think it's on the floor, luckily only one thing came out - oh no! we've got leftover veg in a pot and it fell out ... upright! oh wow we'll have that later. The town here looks lovely, so we're going to drive down onto the coast onto the seafront and have a little look around before we head a bit further south. Wow it's a lovely view! Big resort hotels here, it must be a big tourist destination? In fact we've noticed from Ephesus onwards that we've suddenly found more English-speaking people and the people in the shops and most people we have met so far speak English.
I'll just park, awwwh we just got a follower just shouted out to us. So we met up with some of our followers who were screaming and waving, and they've just bought us a coffee. It's always so nice to catch up with our masks on and socially distanced, thank you very much! We've arrived in the town of Kusadasi, i think i'm saying it right? But they've got all these beautiful marble statues all the way along this fabulous esplanade! I love this, I've just been stood here watching these dogs playing in the surf, it is glorious to see how much fun they're having.
So the lovely couple that we were talking to earlier said that if you're only here for a few hours, you definitely have to walk to the two little island peninsula bits that you can see behind. I think one's called pigeon island, you can see them in the distance behind me. So we're going to take a walk down the seafront, past the harbour and just enjoy this town for a couple of hours. And I think i can see some tall ships? i think you might be right. Walking along the seafront here it's absolutely lovely. Actually this is a good opportunity we haven't updated you guys on the the curfew situation here in Turkey, not the curfew situation ! Yeah so we're following the chats that we had yesterday, they've actually announced some new curfews.
So we're not allowed out at the weekends for like the whole of the weekend from like Friday night to Monday morning, yeah but for us that's okay because we're normally editing videos in the van on Saturday and Sunday, and Marianne's normally writing the newsletter, so normally the weekend for us is actually a good time to catch up with our work. So from that perspective that's okay, they've also added this curfew now on weekdays so I think it's from 9 p.m in the evening until the following morning you're not allowed out, again for us that's not a problem because we're normally in Trudy by the evening because we don't like to leave Trudy on her own in the dark, she gets very lonely and sad! These kind of restrictions at the moment aren't affecting us too much, obviously the restaurants being closed and stuff to pay but you know it could be so much worse couldn't it ? Yeah absolutely! They have started to do some sort of restrictions between some of the provinces here in Turkey but for us at the moment it's more the Izmir area the Istanbul areas and those big cities. So we're heading south and the cases seem to be lower where we're heading, so that's good and of course Trudy is the best place to isolate! Exactly.
For those of you that messaged us to say about the tourists and that the curfew doesn't apply to tourists, you're right our impression is that for tourists it doesn't apply, but because we are here on a residency card for a year, it does apply to us. But if you are here as a tourist using the 90-day allowance from the stamp in your passport, then my impression is that you are free to still go out during curfew hours. It's a beautiful, lovely sea out there and the waves come in and splash up over the wall! I love the water, there's something really hypnotic and relaxing about it, it's just one of my favourite things to see. We've just walked past the fish market, which is very useful to have a mask, because I personally do not like the smell of fish and then I said to Chris oh look there's some cats! They look like they're waiting for the fish, and then we realised they were actually statues! Sorry about the noise there's drilling going on. Walking around the coastline it's been lovely, because there's lots of little restaurants and bars and things, obviously covid time everything's closed or just take out 'packet service' as they call it here and we've arrived um a lovely viewing point where you can see the island and there's loads of fishermen as well which is lovely to see you can tell you've arrived into a tourist place, because there's signs up for gastro pubs and you can see Guinness signs ... uh what Guinness signs?
They're greatness! oh they say greatness! doesn't it look like Guinness? i thought it was Guinness, oh i thought it was Guinness. But yeah there's bars and pubs all the way along and coffee bars and on the menu is burger, pizza and chips and chips! What's funny is walking down the seafront, I spotted different pubs burger, bars, domino's pizza places, fast food outlet, taste of home ... isn't it people come from yeah exactly but they're all closed at the moment. And tractors! The town's got lots of nice looking hotels like the one, here but what's what's nice is they don't have a beach outside the hotel, but what they do have is this little gate that you can open go down and go swimming right there! and the water is crystal clear! The Turkish turquoise coast sort of starts from Izmir and goes all the way beyond Antalya, so we are already on the turquoise coast here in Turkey and looking at the colour of the water, you know why it's called the turquoise coast! Does it make you want to go swimming? yeah it's a massive destination for holiday tourists isn't it. It's just so quiet at the moment, the world is a very strange place right now, yeah in fact somebody messaged me and said normally there's 10,000 British tourists in this area in the summer! Crazy It's a very grand looking fortress here on this little island joined on this jetty that goes out to it, and uh to give you a perspective if the town's back that way, Trudy's parked up somewhere in the middle over there, we've walked round and this little island that you can see over here, i think is joined to the mainland by a bridge, so we thought we'd go and check that out. This is great we're walking past, they've got this taxi sign here showing how much it is to go to Ephesus, the Basilica of St John, Bodrum Airport, Izmir Airport, National Parks, The Virgin Mary Chapel that's great, that they've got the fixed prices like that.
I think on this seafront, there's another car that's trying to steal Trudy's thunder! It's a Dodge and it's got a British number plate too, what a lovely car! So we've jumped back into Trudy and we are now heading about an hour and 20 minutes South to a town called Didim. You got to love the double parking here! It's a lovely drive over the hills here today, a little bit misty, it's a little bit of a haze going on everywhere today so the views aren't probably as nice as they would be. There's a lot of quarries in this area getting some kind of rock and huge amounts of solar up on the mountain side up there. Whoops we forgot to close the roof, is it still attached? is it still there? yeah it is, thank goodness .... pre-flight check failed! Pre-flight epic fail, epic fail of the pre-flight checklist! The funny thing is we've driven for like half an hour and only just noticed.
Because the windows have been open, so we didn't hear it and we're just driving past loads of wind turbines, Marianne suddenly said "is the window open?" because the wind reminded her! So we're just arriving in Didim It's good timing because the sun is starting to go down, so the property prices on this board are in Pounds and TL, I think there might be a few British here! So we've driven about 40 minutes further south from that lovely stop and we've ended up here on this car park, it's really nice and flat, we put the chocks in on one side just to lift our heads up, there's a lot of residential but obviously because the curfew's on there aren't so many people about. So I'm just going to start answering your comments and messages and checking Instagram, Chris has already started working to make the next video. Wow we had some good news this morning, they've just announced some breaking news!! So they have just announced that the Pfizer vaccine for Covid 19 has been approved by the regulators in the UK and they are starting the vaccination program as early as next week!! This is massive massive news for us and everybody else out there who is trying to travel or go on their own adventure! I'm sure there are lots of people jumping up and down with excitement with us but we're really excited aren't we? Absolutely! so yeah maybe we we're hoping that in the months to come. we'll be able to fly back to the UK to get the vaccine because we are over 50. I'm 50, so they said that one of the future groups will be 50s and over, so that's great! So maybe by Spring next year, sort of April / May we'll be able to carry on into Georgia.... I mean who knows.
Maybe some of the countries will say that you can cross the border if you've had a vaccination and prove it. Yeah very early days and I know, you're probably looking at us now going what are you talking about! You need to wait, you need to wait, but we are so excited we are like kids at Christmas - just before Christmas!! And we don't know exactly how it's going to work, we were talking about going back to the UK to get our new Russian visa before we go, and our driving licence will need a stamp before February, so maybe we'll be able to combine it with a vaccination? We're not planning on getting on a plane right away, but we are definitely planning and if we can't go to Georgia we've just emailed a shipping company to get prices to ship to the States or Canada. Yeah so that's another option, so this adventure is going to carry on for a lot longer! We were saying though, if we actually go to the US or Canada and then drive around the world in the other way, if we go via Canada, by the time we get back to Turkey it will be the finish line! So we'll be right here to have our around the world party - location in Turkey! Hilarious!! Yeah so there you go, so watch this space! So we had a good night's sleep here last night, i managed to make my spaghetti bolognese which was delicious and we're excited as well because obviously with the curfew regulations and the corona virus which is still out there, but we can't show you everything but we want to remind you that we're going.
We're doing these videos to inspire you and give you guys a taste of what's out there and Turkey will be waiting for you once we can all get traveling again! Absolutely and we've got some, we're going to share some news with you soon on the MOT and the solution to get around the MOT issues, if you come here for more than a yeah, so yeah watch this space! Anyway we think we're going to probably head just a little bit down the coast, just to find a little park up with maybe a sea view. Nice spot, very nice this is better, we've only come about 15 minutes down the road. And we found this little bay, the sun is shining down the water is crystal clear and we're shaded from the wind, we've got a good internet reception, what do you reckon love? I reckon it's lovely, a lovely little spot to wake up to, I could hear horses this morning, oh yeah there are there's some horses just walking behind the fence there. This morning we're going to head down the coast a little bit towards the tourist city of Bodrum, we've never been to Bodrum before, we've heard so many people have told us we have to stop there on the way so we're going to try and find a park up in the City centre. And hopefully explore that tomorrow morning, before the weekend's lockdown starts tomorrow night and we'll find somewhere nice and secure to park up for the weekend.
These lockdowns get in the way of filming and traveling don't they, but it's good we had a good night's sleep here, it was absolutely dead there was no noise whatsoever last night which was lovely and that's one good thing about having the lockdowns in the evenings during the week is that nobody comes out! There's no noise, no music from cars, it's just lovely and nice and peaceful! Right all packed up, we're all good, the fridge is on, the fridge is closed today! Bodrum here we come! It was funny actually because parking here last night just before we went to bed, we were like let's put the shocks behind the tyres, and we just tested because we're sloping towards the sea and where we slept on Cunda island when the chocks came when the handbrake came off, when we were on the chucks we rolled backwards and because we were actually aiming towards to sea we thought it would be a good idea, yeah it was funny actually because in Cunda island we sort of didn't really know what was happening .... we just heard this noise and it was just as i was asleep, yeah it was a handbrake it sounded like a growl, but it was just the handbrake! Yeah it was a nice little find this dirt track here, on park4night - the broken glass that's the only problem .... it is! I love it, when you drive down the road and see like goats and stuff hanging out - goats on the road.
So we're just going round lake Bafa, this huge lake it actually looks like the sea, you know it's big and it's misty, so we can't quite see the other side and it runs parallel to the main road here. It's lovely just looking at the mountains trying to peek their way through the mist and they're just picking up the sunlight. It looks really tropical doesn't it? It reminds me of probably about 20 years ago in Malaysia, on a bike it wasn't a motorbike it was more like a 90cc scooter and with us two on it bouncing around the roads of Langkawi, think we actually if i remember correctly we buckled the wheel! Yes we had to pay.
What a wonderful experience So the road into Bodrum hugs the coastline here all the way along the Northern edge of the start of the Bodrum peninsula, pretty isn't it? yeah you can see why thousands of people flock here in the summer. We're just arriving into Bodrum city here, lots of villas, the view down over the bay there you can see there's a castle. So we've just driven down towards the sea and we're hoping we can find a nice park up here at the end of this peninsula for tonight. The sea and the boats right there, really pretty, they basically said it's okay to park down here for overnight, so we'll we'll go down to the end see if we can find somewhere to park up for the night and yeah right by the sea, good choice Christopher! Look at this and it should be walking distance to Bodrum.
We've just parked Trudy up behind me and we're just going to have a little wander down the dirt track, just to see if there's better parking a little bit further down. Wow nice spot, i mean considering we're smack in the middle of Bodrum, I'm not sure in normal high season we'll be able to come down here, but amazing I wish there was smell-o-vision because there's lovely fresh sea air! Look how blue that water is! Turquoise coast, so many villas on the other side look. So we're going to just have a walk down to the end and just see what's down there, sometimes it's easier to scout it out on foot in case the road suddenly comes to an end and it saves you reversing loads backwards, and it's sometimes nicer to walk and scout because it's just a nice walk! It is especially today, the sun is out on the blue sea. Wow so we've come up to the about halfway down this little peninsula and you've got views of the sea this side and this side! it's just for us trying to find somewhere nice and flat to park, that's the key, I think down at the bottom, down there looks nice? yeah.
So the plan is we're going to stay here for the rest of the afternoon, it's probably about two o'clock in the afternoon now, we're going to hang out here and make some lunch, I really fancy some um fried potatoes, beef sausages, eggs, mushrooms! I really fancy that for lunch today. A little bit like an English breakfast, is it because you are so close to British? no i just fancy a little bit of sausage and and chips! So not Turkish food, i know but just just craving a little bit of that and look where we've ended up! The colour of the water, that is a view from the van door! I think we found a good spot, this spot isn't on park4night, this is a discovery from looking at google earth and driving, so we'll be sure to add, we'll be sure to pop it on there. Yeah some people have been asking us "where are you staying?" and "i don't know where or how do you find your parking spots?" and "where are they?" We've got an app called Polarsteps that tracks us and I'm putting where we stay on Polarsteps. Yeah so if you look at Polarsteps you'll be able to see where we are, there's a link in the description below, it's free to download the app. Yeah it's just a way of seeing where we've been and there's some extra photos and things like that on there, also on our website you can find it on our website. Yeah www.treadtheglobe.com!
Lovely so we got some fried potatoes with onions, some herbs, I like to put a bit of herbs in it. We got some little hot dogs, some fried mushrooms, i'm just doing a couple of fried eggs, nice view, good company, time for lunch! Good morning, we've woken up, we we're still at Atella - Attila's no! three two one! That's terrible! All the way along the seafront here they've got these carvings, these stone carvings by different artists, and i found this wonderful armchair to sit on and opposite me is a TV and let's have a look ... so what's on telly tonight? Cooking with Marianne!! I'm just going to heat up this leftover Spagetti - yes please! Oh you're still there! That's it it is the end of the show, we hope you've enjoyed coming on this adventure with us, if you do, please consider subscribing and clicking the bell notification so you don't miss an episode and we look forward to seeing you next time. Bye for now
2020-12-27 09:13
