Having worked my way through Kim’s Tips for Turkey, it was time to move on to the Aegean coast. One last big breakfast at Halit’s and I’m off, driving northwest past Fethiye and Dalaman and on toward Marmaris. I’m winging this leg of the trip. Despite my best efforts to buy one in Kalkan, I have no map. Nor have I booked a hotel for the night. After being coddled by Kim and Halit for the better part of a week, I’m ready for some unscripted adventure.
The scenery soon grows monotonous, but the roads are excellent, none more than the newly blacktopped stretch that zigzags down to Marmaris. For a moment, I consider stopping here for the night: my back is aching from three hours behind the wheel. But no—Marmaris’s reputation as a big, brash resort city precedes it; Kim was adamant that I “give it a miss.” I settle for stretching my legs on the ridge above, and then push on through pine forests and hairpin bends to the bay-scalloped Datça Peninsula, where i’ve heard rumors of empty beaches, Hellenistic ruins, and grand seaside villas. Rumors they shall remain: I’m only halfway along the peninsula when the sun begins to slide into the sea. So down I go to the workaday harbor town of Datça, groping my way through dimly lit streets to the first hotel I spot. After rousing the night clerk and dropping my bags in a cramped room redolent of mothballs, I console myself with shots of raki and a plate of calamari at a restaurant overlooking the town’s little yacht marina. By 9 p.m., the streets are deserted.
One benefit of this detour is that I get to make my way into Aegean Turkey on the Aegean, hopping a feribot across the sea to Bodrum, a 90-minute passage. Another benefit is that my first sight of Bodrum is from the water, surely its most seductive perspective. Sugar-cube buildings spill down undulating slopes to a harbor teeming with yachts and gulets, a forest of masts that is dwarfed by the ramparts of the Castle of St. Peter. The legen-dary Halikarnas Disco across the water may be the town’s nocturnal nexus, but by day,
This 15th-century Crusader fort of imposing towers and amphorae-strewn courtyards is its marquee tourist attraction, and well worth braving the crowds to see.
The birthplace of Herodotus—Bodrum was known as Halicarnassus in his day—is also home to the original mausoleum, built in 350 B.C. as the tomb of the satrap Mausolus. Counted among the ancient world’s Seven Wonders, only its foundation remains today; the knights who built the Castle of St. Peter carted off much of its stone, while other relics ended up at the British Museum.
