Alanya, Turkey

[pghflyer]

Since I found next to nothing about this in preparing for our trip, I thought I would post a little bit for future cruisers.

 

We were on NCL Jade and ships dock in a little port right on the beach and downtown. You can easily walk down the beach waterfront and walk up into town, as both are less than 5 minutes from when you step-off the ship.

 

We did not book any excursions as we don't do ship tours and the other good tour from an independent company was sold-out.

 

As you exit the customs/ security area (they don't look at anything), you will find taxis and typical tour peddlers but everyone was very polite and we even saw police hanging around asking drivers/ tour guides for their licenses.

 

Generally, all prices and items in town are in Turkish Lira....a few offered to do a EURO exchange....but there are multiple places in town that offer free/ no-fee exchange to get Lira from Euro. The exchange rate we obtained was the exact market rate for that day, so very easy.

 

We decided the main activity was to check out the castle up at the top of the mountain. There is a local public bus that goes back and forth about every 30 minutes. The pick-up spot is across from the Minaret of the main mosque, about 50 feet down the sidewalk from the Burger King in town. There is a sign posted on the wall with the schedule/ times. The price is supposed to be 1.7TL per trip, but the driver for some reason said it was now 2.0TL each. No other currencies accepted. The bus was packed and took about 10 minutes to get to the top (no way would I want to walk up there, would estimate about 90 minutes if you are interested)....we didn't go into the castle because we heard it was very underwhelming and limited English signage for the price (10TL). The walk down was awesome, great views and only took about 40 minutes.

 

We talked with a couple of other travelers who did take the all-day ship tour and complained about how there were a number of mandatory "shopping" stops and pretty slow pace of seeing things.

 

Anyhow, very nice port for an easy day.

[Canvasback]

I arranged a tour of Perge, Aspendos and Side for 16 NCL Jade passengers from the port of Alanya, Turkey for February 5, 2013 with Aykut Altinisik (www.privatetours-turkey.com). I found Aykut to be very easy to communicate with and flexible in changing the arrangements to better accommodate a growing list of participants. We started out with 6 cruise critic passengers and ended up with 16. Throughout this process he responded very quickly and positively to my request to make necessary changes. The pickup at dockside and return to Alanya was flawless. He speaks English very well and was easily understood by all the passengers in my group. Moreover, his archaeological knowledge was outstanding. I am always impressed when someone thoroughly enjoys their profession and likes sharing it with others. Aykut definitely enjoys working with visitors to turkey. In short, he provided a truly exceptional tour at a very attractive price.