Unguided Blog

Choosing the right golf resort can be a daunting task when your alternatives are multiplying day by day, especially in a city like Antalya, Turkey where the tourism season lasts almost all year long. Here are some quick tips to guide you and ease your pain:

The Right Location

Antalya is a big city. Not only it has a long coast line by the Mediterranean, the city limits go far north, up to the Taurus mountains. And it can be very hot in summer. Observing temperatures of 40+ degrees Celsius in the months of July and August is not uncommon. There is a neat trick at your disposal, however: choose a place that was once a forest like Belek or Side (Sorgun). Although most of the trees like Turkish Pines (lat. Pinus Brutia) would have been butchered, some were left to provide you shade and comfort. When you want to take a break, you can enjoy a precious moment or two resting your back to a few of those pines left. Besides, the trees will enhance your panoramic view when you are sipping from your tequila sunrise.

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The 15th Aspendos Opera and Ballet Festival will start on June 07th. If you are around Antalya until July 03rd (the closing date of the festival), you would not want to miss this spectacular event. After all, there are not many antique theaters left where live performances are available.

The event will host Ankara, Antalya and Istanbul State Opera Houses in addition to the international participants, namely Sofia National Opera and Ballet of Bulgaria and Francesco Cilea Theater of Reggio Calabria/Italy.

Various operas and ballets of Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Puccini, Mozart, Minkus and Bellini will be performed in a setting you are unlikely to forget. Don’t miss it.

I have received a few complaints from Turkish readers for Where You should not Go This Summer. Briefly, they claimed the article was not promoting Turkey. So a clarification is in order.

I have never intended to promote or demote any country, region or place. Yet, I do believe the article does promote Belek, Antalya. Being a traveler myself, I have read many guides, books, booklets, magazines etc, about many weird and wonderful places. Most of them had the intention to promote a particular place and hence, they have all mentioned the good side of the places they talked about. If we are to believe them, there are a myriad of places on earth that the holy books and scriptures claim to exist. Avoiding the pitfall of religious discussion, I can only say that there is no heaven on earth yet, at least for the time being. But some places are close, and Antalya is one of them; provided that we can show the decency to keep it that way.

I do not know any measure other than profit in a capitalist world. The article was written with this in mind. If travelers support such a cause, not only Belek/Antalya will be promoted, but it will be kept as an “almost heaven”, here on earth. I am not going to claim this is the only or best way; it is just a way. It did work on furs, whales etc, it might work here, too. We all make decisions daily, some small, some major. Let this be one of the small ones: by all means visit Antalya, but avoid Belek.

Secondly, I can not and will not boldly claim Antalya is ours just because we were born and happened to live in Turkey. I sincerely believe it is a part of the world heritage and we share it with others, and not necessarily humans. Just because there is money to be made from golf does not justify the destruction of wild life habitats.