Море, солнце и... ничего больше Sea, sun and... nothing else

I rested with my sister in Turkey Karia 4 * (Karia Holiday Resort) from 30.07. until 06.08. 2010 It's good that we were ready thanks to the reviews we read. I am writing my own, perhaps it will be useful to those who want to go. I must say right away that we were generally satisfied with the rest, because we didn’t expect anything special for the amount paid, although I was told that 4 * in Turkey = 5 * in Egypt. To put it mildly, this turned out not to be the case. Either I was lucky before with the Egyptian "fives", or this "four" pulls a maximum of "three". Now in order. Our tour operator "Natalie Tours" as a whole worked flawlessly, although they transferred us to Intertourist in Turkey, but their guide Tatyana took care of all the main issues. The meeting at the hotel left much to be desired: it’s okay that there are no free rooms during the season, and the check-in time is after two, when the vacant rooms are cleaned; we left things on the advice of the guide in the luggage room and went to swim in the pool (by the way, some of those who came with us from other tour operators sat at the reception until two, which clearly had a negative effect on their mood, further enhanced by the amount paid - we heard that one girl for the same period of stay in the same room paid a third more than us). We arrived at the indicated time, waited another 20 minutes, then gave the keys and offered to get there on our own (along with things! - well, there weren’t very many of them) or it’s not known how long to wait for the porter. Our room was located on the 7th level - this is, in fact, the last house on top of the second floor (the eighth level is the third floor of the same house) - it is very high, you can only get there by stairs, the total height is about 10-12 floors. If you are ready to get to your room in this way several times a day in the heat, then this is not a problem. It didn’t really bother us (we went to the sea for the whole day, and “forced fitness” turned out to be handy), but people with sore legs, overweight, and other diseases suffered, tried to change. But levels 1-5 are two-room suites, and it’s noisy there, and from 6 it’s already quite high. By the way, we passed through several hotels - even the fives have a similar location, and the upper levels are very high, but I did not notice special transport for movement.
The hotel is really located quite high (2 km to the beach - this is most likely in a straight line, and not along a serpentine road), but there were no problems with how to get to the sea: minibuses run from the hotel every hour (with air conditioning, comfortable), they don’t leave anyone if everyone didn’t get into one - after 5 minutes the second one will drive up, and in the morning two people always drove up to the beach and the last ones from the beach at once. Once, for the sake of experiment, we reached the beach on foot for 30 minutes leisurely with stops for photographing, we didn’t risk it up the heat and the serpentine road (there is no pedestrian zone). The beach is sandy, clean, the Mediterranean sea (and not the Aegean, as it was also written on some sites), swimming is suitable for people who do not swim well (like me) and families with children: 200 meters is quite shallow, the bottom level either rises or falls, so that swimming is safe, but for experienced swimmers, it’s probably boring: until you reach the depth... Of course, you can’t compare marine life with the Red Sea at all, so you don’t need to carry masks. There were waves for several days - everyone was happy with the free attraction. There are a lot of people in the sea, and local residents come too. On the beach of the hotel there are sun loungers (without mattresses), very rare weaving umbrellas, which save little from the very evil sun at this time (so take creams at least 30-40, be sure to wear a hat, a few opaque pareos and T-shirts with sleeves for walking and swimming in the sea, if you burn out), you can get to the so-called bar (it’s more like a stall) with a very meager assortment of dishes along the hot sand by several carelessly thrown boards. The climate, by the way, is peculiar: very hot (according to the season) - up to 40 degrees (in other areas, they say, it is even hotter at this time) and very humid, the skin is constantly moist, the breathing process is felt.
Another surprise is that linen is not changed every other day, as it is written on the Internet, but once a week, beach towels are issued once, change is not provided, laundry is paid. There is a strange system with towels in the room: there is a leaflet in the bathroom that, in order to preserve the environment, towels are often not washed, if you want a towel replaced, throw it on the floor. Using this recommendation on the third day, we lost a dirty towel (it’s good that we had one), but we didn’t get a clean one, we didn’t go to sort it out, we used the rest. In general, the idea is rather strange: both beach and room towels get so dirty in a week that ordinary washing is no longer enough. Now about the room: the room itself is quite spacious, there are two beds (double and one-and-a-half with good mattresses), the furniture is rather worn out (the wardrobe was difficult to open), the air conditioner hangs over the bed (it had to be turned off so as not to be blown away), the bathroom is small, and the shower the cabin is just tiny (with size 46 I constantly rested against different parts of the body, how do bigger people fit there - ??? ).

A separate topic is food: the restaurant is really nothing more than a dining room, carbonated drinks or diluted Zuko, there are no even packaged juices, a coffee machine (black coffee or with milk), drinking water on tap (everything in bottles is for a fee), beer and locally produced alcohol (by the way, there is no menu of cocktails or other alcoholic drinks, you had to guess what is possible), we drank mostly water, squeezing lemon juice into it; the food is scarce (really! ), of course, you won’t stay hungry (if you are ready to eat french fries and other similar unhealthy food), but there is not much choice, even from fruits in the season there were only watermelons, very mediocre melon taste, once apples and grapes. The pastries also did not please: rolls for breakfast are tasteless, for dinner every day 4 types of the same pastry. You can’t sit on the terrace during the day - the wasps cheerfully stick around the plate (we didn’t even try, but the people tried, but to no avail).
The hotel area is green, quite beautiful, the air is fresh, "dense" (mountains and pine forests), this area is considered one of the cleanest, wonderful sea views, there are small slides that work 2 times a day for 2 hours, 2 bars on the terraces , one by the pool, the pool is large, with sunbeds, mattresses and the same rarely wicker umbrellas. One very big disadvantage of the pool is that it is very slippery, the paths are spread out, but there is no way to walk only on them, everyone fell, both adults and children (we both took turns, and I assure you, without alcohol, during the day in such heat as - it didn’t work), the hotel protected itself by placing warning signs, instead of laying more paths. The animators are clearly overpaid, the evening performances evoked a feeling of pity and slight bewilderment (at least to make it funny, I won’t drink so much). Once there was a performance with an invited team for 1 hour (the so-called "Turkish night") pretty decent, on Saturday - "live music" - a Turkish orchestra (very loud), and that's it! The disco in a closed room did not interest anyone, there is nowhere to walk there (the territory is small, and outside the territory there are serpentine roads, we walked up and down for 40 minutes, walking along the slopes is somehow unsafe). Basically, people sit in the bar all the way in the evenings, so think about your entertainment yourself. In this regard, you will not need a special wardrobe, even in the evenings they go to dinner in shorts, you can not overload the suitcase (we had few things, but not all of them were needed). We also went shopping in the neighboring village to inquire about the prices, yeah, yeah. We went on one excursion: a boat trip along the reed river, Lycian tombs in the rocks, a turtle beach (the latter is a clear exaggeration, they partially lured one turtle out of the water, saw it for several seconds, it did not fully surface, and the luring process took about an hour). The rest of the tours are either expensive, or with a clear commercial bias, we were not interested in shopping in expensive stores, and it was frankly a pity for time.
Bottom line: if you are traveling only by sea and air, you have no problems with climbing stairs and special claims to nutrition, from entertainment you prefer a book (or get-togethers in a bar) and you buy a ticket that lasts cheaper - then go ahead. Sorry for the verbosity, I wanted to write in detail, because. I found few fresh reviews, and from previous years, judging by the same reviews, there have been changes.