Hello! Welcome to our little world of Turkey’s For Life. If you’ve clicked into this page, we guess you’re looking to find out a bit about us and the blog, so let’s do that right now.
Us…
We’re Julia & Barry, and, before we came to Fethiye in 1998, we were the sort of young couple that were never going to go to the same place twice on holiday.
There’s a whole wide world out there to see, after all, and Fethiye is just one small corner of it. We wanted to travel…
Except we got a bit grabbed by Fethiye (most people do) and that was that!
We had three overseas holidays in a row – all of them to Fethiye – and now we’re living here.
Lots of people say to us that we must have been brave to give everything up and move to Fethiye in Turkey.
Well, we would have been brave if that’s what we did, except it wasn’t quite like that. As with lots of aspects of our life, it was all a bit haphazard.
We had been brave in some ways because we sold our house and quit full time careers in England – but just to come and travel around Turkey for 6 months in the winter of 2003/4.
The original plan was that we’d get Turkey out of our system and then go back to England with some vague idea about running our own business.
And… well, we just never went back really.
We bought a little house in Fethiye – completely on a whim – and we’ve been on a very happy, interesting, who-knows-what’s-next Plan B since that day.
But often our life in Fethiye is very normal, too. Well, normal for us.
The Blog – Turkey’s For Life
Like buying a house in Turkey, Turkey’s For Life was started on a whim, as well. I’ve always loved writing and taking photos.
On one wet Fethiye winter day back in 2009, boredom had set in, we were going stir crazy because we couldn’t leave the house due to torrential rain and that did it.
I picked up the laptop and started writing.
So, you’ve probably got the Fethiye weather to blame for the existence of Turkey’s For Life.
Barry loves to play around with all things tech so he started to learn the ins and outs of blogging – and Turkey’s For Life has grown from there (don’t think we’ll ever believe how much it’s grown).
All haphazard – no plans.
We just blog much of our life in Turkey in no particular order. And Turkey’s For Life is mainly centred around three loves in our life: Fethiye, Turkish Food and Slow Travel.
Fethiye
Fethiye is where it all started and, of course, is our first love. We’ve lived here, in the same house, for many years now and have no intentions of shifting.
These days, Fethiye stretches to Çalış, Kayaköy, Hisarönü, Ölüdeniz and the villages along the road to Dalaman Airport, all the way out as far as Göcek.
Just with our Fethiye exploits alone, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover for Turkey’s For Life.
In short, you’ll find:
- Loads of recommendations for things to do in Fethiye and around the region.
- Reviews and rambles about the various Fethiye restaurants and bars we tend to bob into.
- Write-ups about any of the Fethiye hotels we like to go and nosy around.
- Updates about other general goings on around Fethiye, too, especially in our monthly Fethiye news roundups.
Turkish Food
Guess it helps that we gushed over Turkish food right from our very first holiday to Fethiye. Now we live here, Turkish food is a huge part of our lives.
We love to experiment with different Turkish recipes. If we see a food we’ve never eaten before, we’ve just got to try it and we also love shopping locally for all things edible.
In our Turkish food posts, you’ll find:
- Lots of Turkish recipes from basic dishes such as Turkish rice to Ottoman dishes like Hünkar Beğendi.
- Seasonal eating ideas. We are known to get a tad excited, walking around food markets in Turkey. We just love them. Obviously, Fethiye market, every Tuesday, is a regular for us along with the Çalış Sunday Market and the Friday Village Market.
- Street food. So cheap, always yummy. When we travel, we travel on a budget and Turkish street food is that substance that keeps us well-fuelled as we wander. From söğüş to the more well known döner kebab; if it’s there, we’ll eat it…and write about it.
Slow Travel Turkey
What’s the rush? We’re big fans of slow travel. Remember, after selling up in England, we came to Turkey to travel.
Buying the house slowed all that right down but we do get around, and there are so many places we still want to see.
And more often than not, when we do go somewhere, we go there slowly. Slow travel in Turkey means you’ll find posts about:
Intercity bus travel. Oh yes, we love us a good bus journey and we’ll tell you all about it, too, like when we go to Istanbul by bus.
There are loads of other bus journeys on the blog, too, and there’ll be more to come.
Rail travel
Long distance rail travel has a certain romance and nostalgia to it. One of our Turkey travel highlights was our going overnight from Ankara to Erzurum by train.
Road trips
On the rare occasion we get our hands on a hire car, we’re off out onto the open road. Our most memorable road trip to date, for so many reasons, has to be our East Turkey road trip.
Arrival
Better to travel than to arrive? Interpretations galore of that famous phrase. Us, we’re a bit no-nonsense – we love both! On arrival, we just like to wander and (more often than not) get a bit lost.
Local foods, bars, shops; that’s us and that’s usually what gets written about on Turkey’s For Life.
We do go and see the famous sights…it’s just that if there’s a huge queue for these sights, we have been known to do an about-turn.
We get there eventually, though.
Like we said, we take our time. Hey, Aya Sofya and Topkapı Palace in Istanbul have even made it onto the blog…we got up early to miss those queues.
Where Else Is Turkey’s For Life?
That lovely dear planet of social media where people of the world procrastinate, dream of being elsewhere…dream of Turkey.
Okay, yeah we know not everyone in the world does that but if you’re a Turkophile, like us, you can follow us all over the place as we share photos, videos, bits and bobs…all things Turkey. Like us / follow us here by clicking on the links:
- Like Turkey’s For Life On Facebook for daily pics and shares of useful and not-so-useful-but-fun links.
- Follow Turkey’s For Life on Twitter for complete random Turkey stuff – both tweets and retweets.
- Follow Turkey’s For Life on Instagram for daily Turkey (granted, mainly Fethiye) photos – and we sometimes get excited and post extra pics, too, if we’re trekking or whatever.
- Subscribe to Turkey’s For Life on YouTube. We do dabble in the odd video of our own, here and there (see above), and we also have all sorts of other videos – Turkish music, Turkish food and the like – on our channel.
- Follow Turkey’s For Life on Pinterest. We love Pinterest. Obviously, most pins are Turkey-centred but we have boards for other places and areas of interest, too…Well we’re not completely Turkey-obsessed.
- Oh, if you use Flipboard, we’re there, too. Follow Turkeys For Life on Flipboard.
And, if you don’t want to miss out on new blog posts, subscribe to Turkey’s For Life (it’s free) so that you get new posts delivered straight to your inbox.
Okay, we hope you enjoy the Turkey’s For Life blog about life in Fethiye and Turkey and enjoy your visits (or life) here. We might well bump into you somewhere…
Thanks a lot for reading – we’re always very grateful!
Julia & Barry
Turkey’s For Life…