Hi Mary,
Oh, Fethiye is one of my favourite places in Turkey, and I did live out there (on and off) for two years, so I know the area very well. Whereabout in Fethiye are you staying? Most people tend to stay in either Ovacik, Hisaronu or Oludeniz. They're all very close to each other, so it doesn't really matter where you stay out there, although I personally would avoid staying in the centre of Hisaronu as it can get very noisy at night. When I first went there I stayed in a hotel on the edge of Hisaronu called the Montana Pine Resort and it was beautiful - very peaceful, too.
Oh, before I continue, I hope you haven't booked Calis in Fethiye - that's not very nice at all! It's flat and built on swampland; quite scruffy with a grubby beach, and has lots of mosquitoes! The ONE and only good thing about Calis is you can see some beautiful sunsets from there. But you can also see beautiful sunsets from Fethiye Town, so if you're a sunset person Fethiye harbour is the place to go at night.
Arriving from the airport you'll drive through Calis and it can be very disappointing at first, as it looks all scruffy and tatty. Fethiye is a working town, so when you first see it you won't like it - but that end of it is the rough part - so don't start worrying when it comes into view. The other end of Fethiye where the harbour is - and where Karagozler is - is lovely. Once the bus takes you through Fethiye Town it turns up the mountain road and you first come to Ovacik (which is mainly residential with a few restaurants/hotels etc) and that road leads into Hisaronu which is a man-made resort. It's quite high up the mountain (so Ovacik and Hisaronu are a little cooler than down below - but August will still be baking - as you know) and Hisaronu is just a smallish resort full of shops/bars/restaurants etc. After going through Hisaronu the road then snakes down the mountainside to Oludeniz. The drive down is beautiful - there's purple and scarlett bouganvillia lining the road and the sight of the sea and Oludeniz below is stunning. It's very green there and very beautiful.
If you want to go on the beach you have to go to Oludeniz's main beach which is quite shingly, but is in a lovely setting, and you'll see all the paragliders coming down from there. I like the beach there, and the sea; and although it shelves quite deeply it's fresher to swim in than the water in the Blue Lagoon. But the Blue Lagoon is a must-see, and the beach is sandy there, too. It's just behind the main beach, and you'll find a dolmus to take you there. There's a few different beach areas in the Blue Lagoon, and people tend to find a favourite one and stick to that. Very often the manager or owner of the beach will pick you up for free from your hotel - so that's handy.
The restaurants are much of a muchness in the Blue Lagoon, but the Sugar Beach is probably the nicest. It's very laid back and is beautifully designed, and they claim their beach has the softest sand on the lagoon. We tended to use a small section of beach on the Lagoon that was free to use (no charge for sunbeds) but we did buy our drinks there and have lunch - which was always good. I've forgotten the name of the man who ran that beach, but it's the last one you come to after the dolmus drops you at the Lagoon and you walk through to the beach.
Beach-wise you can't beat Gemiler beach - it's even prettier than Oludeniz and as it's less well-known you often have the beach almost to yourselves, save for a few other people. In the afternoon a few boat-trips will stop and the people will come onto the beach for 10 minutes - but they all shoot off again. I really recommend that beach. You can get to it by boat (we hired a speedboat one day and got to it that way) but you can also drive to it through Kayakoy (where the Greek ghost town is) It's a lovely, scenic drive, and takes about 15/20 minutes from Ovacik. There's a couple of small restaurants on Gemiler beach which do beautiful fresh grilled fish, salad, chips etc, including wine, beer, soft drinks....It's right on the beaach and is a lovely place to have lunch. We ate there many times, and also took my daughter and family there, and never had a bad meal - it was always really fresh and beautifully cooked. I have read of some people complaining that they overcharge, but we never had that happen to us - but if you do decide to go there (which I thoroughly recommend) make sure you check the prices first and make sure they've got the final bill correct. But as I say, we were never overcharged.
If you're not scared of dangerous roads and sheer drops a trip up to Faralya is a must. It's just up the mountain road from Oludeniz and the views from there are stunning. It is very hot and still up there (very quiet, too) but there's a couple of little bars/restaurants up there with wooden huts in the trees that you can sleep in if you want to. The restaurant up there directly above Butterfly Valley is lovely, simply because the view is magnificent - and you can actually walk down the very steep path to the beach below (but that's quite a dangerous walk, and it would be murder climbing back up) I read that Kate Moss stayed at Faralya last week - at the Lazy Lizard Hotel - and as the name suggests it's a total chill-out place.
If you decide to take a boat trip, go to Fethiye Harbour and book one from there. There are a couple of boat trips that leave Oludeniz each day, and although they're OK, they can get packed and when you come back it can be really difficult getting off the boat. I don't know if it happens every day, but when we came back to Oludeniz after a boat trip the sea was really choppy, and everyone had terrible difficulty staying upright as they walked down the gangplank - it kept being thrown up high with each big wave - and even the boy holding the rope kept getting thrown up in the air. We managed to get off, but it was quite scary. Of course, the boat trips in Fethiye Harbour don't have that problem. You just walk straight off them onto the quayside. If you do book a boat trip make sure to ask if they have music on them. You may like really LOUD THUMPING rap - but I hate it - and was once trapped for about 7 hours on a boat that played rap NON-STOP! It was so awful I had to keep my iPod in my ears and have it on full pelt to drown out the rap. I prefer a boat trip where they either have no music at all or just soft gentle music in the background. But you will find a boat trip to your liking (there's loads to choose from along the harbour) and the price always includes a free lunch or barbecue - so they're good value. Oh, if you go on a Sunday take a boat that stops in Gocek - well worth seeing! The 12 Island trip is always popular too.
If you want some touristy nightlife Hisaronu is probably the place. It can get loud, and it's a bit 'Blackpoolish' but if you're in the mood for a laugh and a few drinks it's quite good fun. We used to go to a club called Time Out, and lots of people enjoy going there as it's quite entertaining watching people sing karaoke. We always seemed to finish our nights off there, and although it was cheesy, it was great fun watching the people sing. Some of them were awful! The best ones were those who thought they were good, and behaved like they were auditioning for a talent show. Of course, my singing voice is the worst in the world, so I never went up - but there were some people who were almost as bad as me - and they thought they were good! Oh, you have the usual barmen-flirts in there.....
Most of the restaurants in Hisaronu are much of a muchness, but we used to go to the Robin Hood and the Oasis - which were always very good. But I can't vouch for what they're like now. One to AVOID (if it's still there) is a fish restaurant slightly set back from the main road; if the same people are running it they are crooks. They tried to pass off shredded chiken breast as white crab meat - they even put it in the old shells of crabs and covered the chicken with white sauce. It was run by a Turkish woman who started cursing when I told her the crab was chicken!
The restaurants down in Oludeniz are again much of a muchness. Sadly, the White Dolphin is no longer there (that was exquisite) but they have relocated to a small island off Fethiye harbour, and if you ring them they will collect you in a boat. It's quite expensive - but as a treat - well worth the experience. They did lovely lobster, prawns etc....and I've heard the setting is even better now! The other restaurants we used to use in Oludeniz were the Secret Garden (just off the main road) and the Olive Tree.
The best restaurants are in Fethiye Town itself, although the ones along the harbourside are not as good as the ones in the town - but they're nice to just sit at and have a drink overlooking the harbour and boats. We used to go to Megri restaurant which was just at the start of Fethiye market. There are two Megris's - one inside the market and the one on the corner - the one on the corner is the best one for sure. It's opposite a Turkish bar where they smoke the hubby bubbly pipes, and if you keep walking down that side road where Megri's is you'll find two more proper Turkish restaurants which are excellent. The food is really, really good. Authentic and cooked beautifully. You don't get many tourists eating there (it's mainly Turks) but they do serve alcohol, and they're really reasonably priced. They're quite nicely decorated too - tablecloths etc - and one of them does hot Hoummous with hot melted butter as a starter - which sounds disgusting - but is terribly moorish!
There's another restaurant going towards Calis (I'll have to ask Ertie the name of it - I've forgotten) which overlooks the sea and they do fantastic Turkish food too. Again it's very reasonable, and they also do that very fattening hot cheese dessert with syrup and shredded pastry. It's only Turks who eat there, but it's nicely set-out and comfortable.
In between Megri's and those other Turkish restaurants in that side street is a Turkish nightclub where all the locals go. I used to like it in there, although the singers really belt the songs out as LOUDLY as possible! But I used to like it as it reminded me of some of the Turkish and Arabic clubs they have in London where they all sit with bottles of Raki and Scotch on the table and have plates of nuts all over the place, and smoke like chimneys. There's a slight touch of menace and seediness to the place - it's all darkly lit and smoky - but the harlot side of me enjoys that.
Oh, I nearly forgot the fish market! You MUST go there. You choose your fish from the fishmongers in the centre of the market (sometimes the prawns are still moving....) and then you pick which restaurant you'd like to cook it for you. It's very reasonable - and absolutely delicious! We always sat at the restaurant in the corner (I'll have to ask Ertie the name of that, too!) but they cook the fish beautifully. The owner (Flirt) does beautiful beer-marinated calimari which melts in your mouth. He also does lovely stuffed mussels. Everything he does is nice, actually, even his salads with his 'vicked salad dressing' as he used to call it. We'd have meze or hot garlic king prawns to start; then beautifully fresh sea bass with salad and chips; a couple of bottles of Angora (I think that's the most palateable white wine they do) and we'd be there for hours! Lunch or dinner - it was always fantastic. Dinner is probably better as they they put lots of twinkly lights all on the trees, which gives it a lovely atmosphere with all the hustle and bustle too - and then we'd go over to the harbour to have a few more drinks where we'd sit at a bar covered with jasmine, which smells beautiful as you know...
For shopping it's better to go into Fethiye market rather than Oludeniz (Olu is dearer) although there's a couple of handbag shops in Hisaronu which do very good imitations.
Oh, it's worth taking the bus to Kalkan for the day (it's only about an hour and half away) but really is worth seeing. Patara is lovely too (very laid back) and the beach is gorgeous - huge and sandy. If you go on a jeep safari they'll take you to Patara beach, but they take you to the start of it (it runs for 17 miles) so you don't get to see the best part. You need to go to Patara itself (the bus goes there) and it will drop you off at the best part of the beach. It's a nice trip out if you're in the mood. Personally, I would hire a car for a couple of days and drive down to Kalkan and Patara. You've got freedom then. The coastal road between Kalkan and Kas is stunningly beautiful, so if you do decide on exploring I'd plump for that. Having said that, there's lots to see and do in Fethiye itself, so you may not have time to go outside of it.
If I can think of anything else I'll let you know....
I'm sure you'll have a great time!
Strawbs
Home
He showed us where the cool box thing was to keep our drinks, but when I asked him where they kept the lifejackets he looked shocked! He traipsed off to get a couple, but it was like it hadn't occured to him that we could have broken down and got stranded miles out - and would need lifejackets. We also had to ask him how to make contact if we broke down (we were planning on going right out - not just whissing up and down the beachfront) and he just gave us his mobile number - and that was only because we asked. As it happens we had a lovely day and went miles along the coastline stopping off at different beaches and coves etc, but there were times when we were a long way out and I'd have felt terribly scared without a lifejacket or means to make contact if we broke down in the middle of the sea. Ertie did all the driving, but when I had a go I was terrible! And I'm a good car driver. I don't know how it happened, but I nearly went into some swimmers - thank God I managed to avoid them in the nick of time - I think they were German - Germans often swim miles out to sea I've noticed. And their swear words sounded German too! Of course, I was banned from driving it after that (which I didn't mind, actually) and we did have a fabulous day - but an accident could so easily have happened.
) but it sounds gorgeous....they also do homemade lemonaid, huge beautiful kebabs and quite unusual dishes too...and their puddings sound really good! All different creations, some made with pistachios, rose syrup, creme custards, walnuts, and that hot cheese dessert I've forgotten the name of 
