Our Home Town, Marmaris

Our town was originally a village with its main income sources being fish and honey.

These days it is almost entirely built for tourism although honey and fish are still income for some.

Most of the city is newly built except for the restored castle and surrounding old town, which looks like a Greek town (of course due to Turkish long history with Greece).

The castle was reconstructed by Süleyman the Magnificent during his expedition against Rhodes.

The Marmaris Castle is one of the few castles in Turkey that also possesses a museum.

According to Greek historian Herodotus, the first city walls in Marmaris were constructed in 3,000 BC, although the only written source about the construction of the castle by the renowned Ottoman traveler, Evliya Çelebi, in his work Seyahatname.

Çelebi, who visited Muğla and its vicinity in the 17th century, says Sultan Süleyman ordered the construction of the castle before his expedition to Rhodes and that the castle served as a military base during the expedition.

An important part of the castle was destroyed during World War I by a French warship. Until 1979, locals of Marmaris inhabited the castle, which is known to include 18 residences, a fountain and a cistern.

The castle was registered as a monumental structure in 1983 and opened as a museum in 1991. (source: wikipedia)

The castle has quite the view!

It also has a museum with found coins, earth wares and artifacts found in this area.

Just like the whole town, even the museum has cats :)

And built around the castle is the old town, lots of the houses are used as restaurants but plenty are still used as homes.

I love its charm.

The little details here and there are lovely, some are a bit hidden.

Evil eyes are of course here and there..

And you get a peek of the castle from time to time.

I love places where the old charm is not ruined.

These statues were made a while back, and there are a whole bunch more at the marine and in town. I'm not a huge fan but most people seem to like them and they do give some extra playfulness.

Waterpipe hoses, not healthy but so colorful :)
If you ever book a vacation to our town come and visit us :)!

Sunday Expedition

We had another wonderful Sunday, it is hard to believe that these are taken in November. We are still having wonderful weather and we are making use of it!

This week we drove in to another not visited road and we were glad that we did. We came across some small little bays with beautiful clear water. Boat owners were also enjoying the amazing weather, but all in all it was quiet and peaceful.

The water was so clear that we actually saw some beautiful critters in the water.

A huge jellyfish, little fishes were hiding near it.

And an octopus who gave several different poses to me.

Near this magical little bay we walked towards the woods.

We did not come across a single person, which is one of the advantages of going in to roads that most people do not go to.

We came across an old well, not in use anymore for a long time as it was mostly filled with mud.

Some forest beauties.

And deep in the forest a little fairy tale house, the witch was out collecting herbs :)

On our way back I saw a massive amount of cactus, twice my height. There was a stop sign among them, most likely put there when they were much smaller, but it seemed like the stop sign was for the cactus as you could hardly see it from the car.

These Sunday trips always gives us new energy, I hope you enjoyed it with us!