The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
Kicking Back in Kalkan

We planned on five days in Kalkan. In retrospect, four would have been better. It's a lovely area, but the heat and humidity has been hard to handle. I had thought that we might spend our last full day here wandering through the old town but we were overheating just making the run back to Hunkar Ocsakasi for lunch -- not the 95 degrees somebody said to expect on Sunday, but definitely hotter than usual.

The day was overcast, the humidity was up, there was no breeze to cool things down and no other sights we particulary wanted to see, so we exercised our prerogatives and did nothing! We went back to the apartment, turned the air conditioning on for the first time since we arrived and just vegged out. I read (I've finished two books in the last two days!) and Margene slept all afternoon.

Talk about laid back ... we couldn't even muster the energy (or the appetites) to go out for dinner. So we ate whatever we had in the refrigerator that we didn't want to take on a five-hour road trip tomorrow and called it perfect.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is nothing at all.

But since I don't want you to suffer withdrawal symptoms, I will use this opportunity to share a few pictures that didn't make it into the daily reports.

Back to Hünkâr Ocakabasi for lunch. Margene was stuck on the spinach and cheese pide she had yesterday but I decided to try the döner dürem, like a wrap made with the meat they are continuously roasting in front of the fire. It is really a Turkish version of what we know as Greek gyros, mostly beef perhaps layered with some lamb, wrapped in a large sheet of fresh lavosh with some lettuce and chopped veggies. Filling and tasty.

Public trash bins are everywhere around town and it seems they empty them all twice a day. Most of the beaches on this part of the coast are rocky but we did find one idyllic spot along the road to Kas that was more along the lines of what I grew up with on Cape Cod ... just with a fierce set of steps to get in an out of. One of our GPS-inspired surprise detours took us through a few tiny villages where we had to wait for the cross traffic of goats to clear before moving on!

Is this a cute couple of geezers or what? The Turks seem to like cute ways of presenting the meal checks. Here's one from Cafe Ev. At Korson Meze, they brought this little ceramic piece containing some Turkish Delight (candied fruit) with the check. Even at Hunkar, the check came with a piece of chocolate and a wet nap.

And with that, we pack up once again and head east.

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