The Venosa Beach Resort and Spa - update

The Venosa can be seen from a long way off, this picture was taken from by the Lunapark. The hotel is that white lump in the centre of the picture. It can also be seen quite clearly from Akbuk.

The landscaping around the hotel has begun and these chaps are putting down the tiles around one of the swimming pools.

Below is the open air entertainment zone right down by the beach.

and this is the swimming platform that the hotel has built for the guests (and locals?) to use.

More demolition along Altinkum Seafront

This is the area known as "hassle alley" to some, where the small retail outlets stood opposite the camel rides.

As you can see, the work has started on removing these units. We don't actually know what will replace them, if anything.

At the moment it is all just a complete mess

and these are the restaurants that were just a few hundred metres along the road.

As you can see, they are suffering the same sort of fate.

Birthday

I must say thank you to all the good wishes I received on my birthday today. I was pampered rotten by Sue (nothing new there then eh?). I had eggs and bacon for breakfast, and was treated to roast pork and all the trimmings for dinner.
During the day I turned my hand to a bit of cookery (I can hear the gasps of astonishment from here you know!!!). I wanted to try to make croissants, which are virtually impossible to get here in Didim, and when you can find them, they are not so good. With all the rising of the dough and rolling out etc, it took most of the day, but this is the end result .... not bad even if I do say so myself.

A walk to Altinkum

It was a lovely day, so we walked into Altinkum along the clifftop path passing Marti Sitesi and Palm Wings on the way

Found many spring flowers in bloom along the way

At the end of our walk we found this little restaurant. It was packed and we discovered why when we came to pay the bill. The prices were similar to those of the Belediyesi Cay Bahce, ie very low, with 2 cans of Coke only 3 TL

Bafa and Azap Lakes

We decided to go for a picnic, so we packed the chairs, food and beverage into the car and sallied forth. We drove to Bafa lake with the intentions of watching the flamingoes. 

However, try as we might, we couldn't find any.

We found Egrets and other wading birds.

 And we found a little fishing village.

So we continued on our journey and made our way to Lake Azap in case they were there.

None here either, but by now we were hungry, so we settled down to our picnic looking at this stunning view. We were privileged to spy an eagle, some pelicans, a kingfisher and several other species of bird during our meal.

And we had it almost to ourselves

Then we descended to the Soke outlets but were surprised to find that since our last visit, just a month ago, some wind turbines had appeared. 

They are right next to the outlets, on the opposite side of the main road and spread out over two or three fields.

The Demolition Continues

 Do you remember the Veranda Restaurant, that lovely eating place near the funfair? 
These are just a few pictures to jog your memory.

 It was one of our favourites and was built by the council.

Believe it or not, even though the council built it, it was an illegal build. The following pictures show you how it looks now.

The Golf Bar amongst others (Valentine's, Café More, Arti et al) has suffered from this push on "illegal builds".

What next?

Laying the Cables for the Venosa Hotel

The Yesilkent road is currently being dug up in order to bury the electricity cables destined to power the Venosa Hotel