Side-Antalya

A little journey to Side!

If you want to travel, looking for amazing places with another culture and history I suggest you one of the most beautiful and interesting ancient city that I saw, Side.

Side, which means pomegranate in the ancient Anatolian language, it`s situated near Antalya, in the south of Turkey and in the ancient times was known as an important commercial port of Europe and Turkey and also a marked place for pirates where they sold slaves. Nowadays this place represent an important port and historical place which is welcoming you into his story, where tourist can be surprised by the amazing ancient monuments, the antiquity landscape which send you in past times or the wonderful beaches which are waiting for you.

Three days of Side wasn`t enough for me because in such a place you cannot get bored, the history, culture, pubs and people makes me to wrote now about this beautiful experience. I visited the Temple of Apollo, the Temple of Dionysus, Ancient baths, Byzantines buildings, State of Agoraand more antiquity monuments. All of these describe an unrelated story by those who haven`t pass here till now.

In these days I stayed at a hotel, Side Yeşilöz Hotel, which was good enough for my necessities, the room was almost ok, but with some missing parts as: garbage room, weak Wi-Fi signal and the furniture of room was only for the important demands, so there was one char, a mirror and two drawers with one little fridge inside. On the other side the food was ok, I like very much Turkish food as I wrote in my previous experience and in the morning, afternoon and evening I ate at hotel, where the food was included in the price and I saved more money for my trips.

Side Yeşilöz Hotel had a swimming pool too, where I played polo with some Turkish people and this was funny, because even I don`t know understand clearly Turkish language, we understood eachother and also my team won the game. For the nights you can take part at the live music, or spectacles provided by the hotel, or playing rummy and smoking water pipe which is a classic game in Turkey. For drinks I suggest you to buy a lot from some neighborhood market where is more cheaper then at hotel because in Turkey, alcohol is very expensive everywhere, especially in restaurants or pubs.

I truly recommend you to come in Side, even if you are in another city, there are directly ways to Side from Istanbul, Ankara or Izmir and the ticket is not expensive, around 60 Turkish Lira, and also I suggest you this hotel because it`s cheaper, like 70 Turkish lira (23 euro per night in September 2016) per night with all included, food, drinks, night spectacles and this is very good if you are a student, because you want to save more money for new experiences.

I wish you a pleasant journey!

Best regards,

Ionescu Cristian Ionel

Facebook: Cristian Ionescu

Instagram: iamchivu