Musings on Calis Beach

Our holiday is nearly over now so I thought I'd try and put down my feelings about the place and the people.

Firstly, the hotel; Hotel Mutlu is located right on the beach, the last hotel on the strip. It has a nice sized pool and garden with plenty of sunbeds (despite some people needing to get out at dawn put their towels out to get top spot). It get's very hot around the pool in the daytime but thankfully there is a cooling breeze that blows off the sea during the day.
The staff are all very helpful and friendly and nothing is too much trouble for them despite working very long hours.
There is a bar which is fairly quiet in the evenings ; I don't know what time it closes as we were never out past midnight.

The resort; Calis Beach (pronounced "chalish") is a small place just outside Fethiye. It has two main "strips", the beach itself which has a load of hotels, all seemingly with a restaurant (and many with a pushy "tout" outside trying to get you in). A lot of the restaurants offer similar food at similar prices, the same sort of fare that you see in every holiday resort throughout Europe. One gem for us was Bella Mammas, an italian joint; a bit more pricey than the others but well worth it for some great food.
The other strip is the main street, with a load of shops and restaurants. They close it to traffic in the evenings by putting cast iron bollards across it (but be careful, you still get gormless twats on mopeds and quad bikes whizzing up it).

Finally, the country; Turkey. Inevitably Turkey will be compared to Greece, probably due to it's location at the eastern end of the Med. In terms of climate it's quite similar but there are a lot of differences. The Turks seem genuinely hospitable and eager to please, something that I was initially suspicious of, being wary of getting ripped off or railroaded into something but I came to realise that this is just their way.
There seems to be a general sense of pride about the place, with parks being provided and gardens watered so that despite being very hot and dry thereis a lot of attractive greenery about the place.
Eating out is fairly cheap and there is a reasonable selection, although being vegetarians it's more limited, something we've come to expect and have to live with. Drinks prices are varied, soft drinks such as coke or fanta are a bit pricey at around 2.50YTL (about £1.20) for a small glass(200ml). The beer served everywhere is Efes, a local lager, and it fetches in at about 3-4YTL (£1.40-£1.80) for 500ml, either bottled or draught. I can't really comment on the quality of it as I almost never drink lager at home, preferring bitter or wine (strangely, despite the climate, Turkey has very little in the way of a wine industry) .


So, would we return ?
To Turkey, definately; It is up there with Greece as a great place to holiday.
To Calis/Fethiye, probably.
To the Hotel Mutlu, if I wanted a hotel holiday then it would be my first choice; the only reason not to would be that we would probably prefer to be self catering being veggies.

To summarise, we spent quite a bit of money to come here,more than we usually do and I think it's well spent, a very enjoyable fortnight.