Lunch at the mountain Trout farm

We had a quick trip into the mountains this morning after I had been into my diving school for my results. I passed but did make some silly mistakes; it doesn’t matter I can pick up my temporary pass tomorrow morning even though the photo was rank. Because of my trouble, I have had to cancel my dive tomorrow; its not worth taking the risk making things worse. Even though I slept the whole night and woke with no pain, it has gradually got worse all day and is almost as bad as it was on Friday. My instructor said I should go to the doctors if it is still bad when we get home. I am hoping that it will be recovered enough for me to take a dive before we come home, otherwise I will be disappointed that I put all the effort in without much reward. By the way, did you like the pictures yesterday?

Back to the mountains; we first drove right to the top of the mountains where the views were great and we ate the fruit that we had brought along for a snack. Claire has me eating little and often and its been working so far. We spotted a sign for Kalkan mountain homes so we went along to investigate but somehow never thought to take photos inside when we got there. They were top end, very large 4 bedroom villas with spectacular views. You walked into a massive entrance hall that was actually a mezzanine with balcony over the open plan kitchen lounge on the second floor down. The lounge wall was one massive glass wall showing the infinity pool on the bottom floor with the views and sea behind it. Each bedroom had its own walk in dressing room and full bathroom with twin sinks. There was an extra bathroom on the middle floor. Two bedrooms on the top and bottom floors with the lounge and kitchen on the middle one.

As there were four or five decent restaurants in Islamler we were stuck to decide which one to eat in. The two that we were recommended by our favourite waiter at Karson were Chops and Degermen which is a trout farm. I fancied Chops because I like meat whilst Claire fancied the other because she likes fish. Guess where we ate?; you know from the title anyway. The trout was lovely though and I got to eat chips. You have to eat trout when you go to a trout farm, especially when the price was only 6TL or £2.40 (they did charge extra for the chips). I knew it would be cheaper outside of Kalkan. Fresh mountain spring mineral water feeds the trout in their pools and the fish are killed to order; you can’t get fresher than that! We will definitely go back and try the Chops another day; they do all local dishes with all their produce coming from local organic sources. Another one of these restaurants in Islamler called Mahmut’s and they offer fixed price meals (a little expensive and touristy) but it includes picking you up from your place in Kalkan and dropping you off afterwards; handy if you have no transport and I bet the sunset is spectacular up there. They also have an a la carte menu so we might try that one for lunch on the bike as well if we get time.

We got back home and shot off to get some more stamps for the postcards (Claire didn’t realise I had bought them when we got the cards and threw them away with the bag). We still haven’t found the post office yet, so that’s a job for tomorrow. Not sure what we will do now the dive is cancelled. It was full anyway so Claire couldn’t have come along as a passenger anyway. I noticed from a local map that the longest beach in the area starts at Patara beach and goes North West so may drive to the other end of it and walk along it tomorrow. If you start at Patara we have to pay the stupid entrance fee. On our way back we popped into House bar for a quick drink and to put the blog on as we hadn’t done it first thing this morning as usual. House have free internet and its quick and secure so I could check the damage to our bank accounts at the same time. You can see Claire inside messing around on the computer. The little dog is called Peanut (well the Turkish equivalent) and is owned by the owner of the bar Alli. Peanut is a term of endearment in Turkey, like we would say Honey or Sweet. See, you even learn thing on this blog site while we have fun.

I have managed to catch up with my OU in the last couple of days now I have finished “The Open Water Manual”. I think I have read about 4 weeks work in the last 2 days so should be about on target by tomorrow and even get ahead again before our return. I will need to be because we are supposed to hand in the Snail project early August so will have to concentrate on that when we get home.

Seeing that villa today has made me want to look around properties here at some point; all I have to do now is convince Claire.