Night out

We had a night out with friends to get into the Christmas Party Mood.



It was held at the Orion Hotel. They laid on transport, a meal and entertainment all for 15YTL / head ... excellent value.

The entertainers were a troupe of 4 players who had us in stitches all night

Between each set, while the costume changes were carried out, the host ran a little light-hearted quiz

At the end of the evening there was time for a little dancing before returning home.

Well done the Orion Hotel for giving us something more than the usual low quality dance acts.

Garden Redesign

We have started work on redesigning our garden water feature.



We want to enlarge the pool area, and do away with the running stream. The cactus has had to go as well as a palm that was threatening to overwhelm this little corner of our garden.

We hope to reduce the amount of water loss from evaporation and leaks this way, as well as being more attractive.

Meanwhile we have moved the rocks to another part of the garden.
The garden looks a little bare now as we have been round with the secateurs and shears, pruning everything back hard, the theory being it will come back twice as strongly next year.

Power Turbines

Here's an update on the power turbines ..... just one to go now (11th from left) and that will complete the 15.



Then connect them up for cheaper and greener electricity.

Pearl Rock Retreat

We went to visit our friends Amanda and Lawrence today in their new home at Pearl Rock in Akbuk




They are so high up in these villas they know St Peter personally ...

But they trully do have a view through their picture window ....

......wow!!

Market Day

Today was Market Day and it was off to Didim for the essential supplies



People here in Turkey are quite used to the variety and freshness of produce available

but in UK, markets such as this are all but a thing of the past.

It is one of the many benefits we have from living here in Turkey.

Olive Harvest

At the moment it's Olive harvest time, and here you can see how these chaps are collecting them ...



they've laid out sheets and now they are trying to part the olives from the trees ...

after there is still a lot to do, soaking them in saline, rinsing, re-soaking ... it's quite a process, much more than we realised!

If you know the full procedure, then please tell us. leave a comment in the comment box. Thanks.

New Hotel... progress

Thought you might like to see how the new hotel at Pine Beach is coming on...



as you can see, it is still rising

Let's hope it doesn't ruin the tranquility of the beach as we had it today ...

bananas

Today we were given a present by our friends Phil and Lorraine.

They have a banana tree in their garden and this was some of the produce.

I was quite surprised at how heavy they were.




We are told we have to put them in a black bag with an apple to get them to ripen.

If you know any different, please feel free to leave a comment.

A trip away

The idea of taking the boat out was so that we could take a few days to go exploring down the coast around Dalaman and Fethiye.

This is Lake Köçeğiz




as is this, Beautiful eh?

and this is a restaurant at Çaliş Beach



and this the Blue Lagoon at Ölü Deniz

We had a wonderful time and saw so many beautiful places, some of them not even on the map.

If you would like to see more pictures of our trip, click on this link http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/david.kearton/HolidayNov2008#

Packing the boat up for the winter

As the weather was predicted to stay fine and calm for the next week or so, we decided to take the boat out for the winter.

We had to scrub off the barnacles from the bottom before we could wrap it up





It took all day, but it looks good now.