We went to Didim to check out of the EU, and to get some repairs. There isn’t much to see in Didim itself, but the marina was very nice with a nice hotel, spa and pool.



Our repairs would have to be done in Bodrum, which is good, or we may have missed it!

Bodrum, Turkey

Bodrum Castle, formerly known as the Castle of St. Peter overlooks the harbor, filled with yachts of all sizes and the enormous fleet of Turkish Gulet boats.



Bodrum, like just about all of the coastal parts of Turkey that we saw, flies about 3 million Turkish flags.

Lots. We docked the boat to the sound of the Muezzin calling the town to prayer. The call to prayer is a haunting, exotic and quite beautiful sound, except at 5:30 in the morning. The night clubs stop blaring music at about 2, leaving you about 3 hours to sleep before it is time to get up and pray. Lucky I brought my earplugs.
The waterfront in Bodrum was more much crowded with tourists than in Greece.



A Celebrity Cruise ship joined us on the day we toured the castle and the Nautical Archeological Museum. The food was excellent, and sufficient to feed a village. This is the mixed grill for 2:



The people were super friendly, the work done at the marina on our dinghy was fast, well-done, and priced fairly, and the energy of the waterfront made our 4 days in Bodrum feel much too short.
My musings while walking around as a tourist; about tourism in general, from a Cruise ship in particular are here: (link).

A beautiful place to stop for lunch is Buyuk Limini on the Datça peninsula to see the ruins of ancient greek city of Kinidos.


This is a ruin just starting to be excavated as a touristic destination, but it was once a very large city. Just walking around we found many pieces of pottery laying about. The lower ampitheatre that held 5000 people was intact, though somewhat weathered.


The upper one once held 20,000, but has been leveled by marble recycling. We walked until we were tired and saw a very small portion of this one large city, thought to be a part of the Dorian Hexapolis.

Datća

We anchored overnight in flat calm water, and went to town the next morning to check out of Turkey. What a charming port town. With a peninsula separating two good anchorages, we had to flip a coin to choose the one on the harbor side. The other had more beach attractions, bars, hotels and cafes, but both sides were busy enough. The elementary school playground is about 100 meters from the sea and the sound of kids playing always adds a joyous note to any good beach bar. The waterfront was lined with park benches and picnic tables for the residents or tourists to sit along the water and while away the hours. I have seen this consideration before, but never with clean ashtrays at every table! We had a few Turkish Lira to spend, so we walked the streets a bit and bought some local honey, olive oil and a I heart Datça t-shirt.