So here it is...................!!!

[RosiB]

Not Merry Christmas, but happy holidays!

We fly out on Friday evening for three glorious weeks. I'd love to say I'm organised and ready - but I'm soooooo not! I don't think I need to do anything else except pack, but at the moment everything is still in cupboards and shopping bags - tomorrow's going to be busy!

This year's holiday is going to be a little different for us. As well as me, Bill and Mia, we're taking Mia's sister Layla; coming along also are our daughter Rachel and her little boy, Teddy and Rachel's partner Steve and his two children. Rachel and Steve are getting married next year and are going to be looking at possible venues in Kalkan - exciting! Regular readers might recall that Bill and I always have our wedding anniversary while we're in Kalkan; this year, it's our 40th, so BIG celebrations planned! I'm always excited to come out to Kalkan, but I can hardly sit still for excitement this year!

More to follow ...........................

Linkback: https://www.enjoykalkan.com/forum/index.php?topic=13794.0

[kalkan4eva]

How lovely to have your family with you for the big Ruby Anniversary and planning a wedding for the following year...exciting times indeed. Kalkan Concierge plan a lot of weddings so might be an idea to contact them whilst your there for a few pointers.
Looking forward to hearing all about it...the possibility of 3 blogs at the same time will certainly help with my Kalkan Blues

[Haybo]

Happy anniversary!  I will be celebrating my 50th birthday too, so its party party party!!

[kalkan4eva]

4 blogs...haybo's too

[RosiB]

Rae and Steve have already booked time with Kalkanconcierge! They are very excited! She keeps phoning me to tell me how excited she is!

[Bob & Jayne]

Not long to go now RosieB, I'm like a ticking clock waiting for the alarm to go off! A wedding in Kalkan how exciting and of course your special wedding anniversary  . Looking forward to seeing you in paradise   

J&B

[Lizilu20]

Oh I'm so excited too and very much looking forward to seeing you and your lovely family and hopefully helping you to celebrate in style.  What a fabulous August it's going to be. 

[RosiB]

Packed and waiting for taxi to airport! Soooooooooooo excited!

[Haybo]

Safe travels!!

[Lizilu20]

Safe journey Ros. See you next week God willing. 

[RosiB]

It's absolutely perfect as I sit here on the balcony, doing one of the things I love best - having a cup of coffee and watching the sun rise over the mountains.
We arrived at about 04:00 yesterday morning. Apart from taking off a little late, the flight was fine. I had been a bit worried that the kids might be a bit overexcited which would make for a difficult journey, but within an hour they were all asleep! They slept again on the ride to Kalkan, so all in all, not bad going.  I had absolutely no intention of seeing yesterday's sunrise but couldn't sleep once we were here, so ended up doing my usual thing of getting everything back to exactly how I want them!
Once everyone else was awake and ready we went down to the Bistro for breakfast. Rachel's partner, Stevie, had never experienced anything quite like a Turkish breakfast before, so new experience number one achieved! New experience number two was shopping in a Turkish supermarket - despite all the years I've been doing just that, I've never quite worked out the logic of the layout, so that led to some interesting purchases!
Rachel had stayed at the apartment with all of the children so it was a bit of a surprise when we got back not to see them all in the pool. Surprise, surprise - disaster number one had struck! Lily - Steve's daughter - had slipped and broken one
of her front teeth! A quick call to Doctor Cenk and they were dispatched to get repairs done, and a very good job he's done, too - you'd never know anything had happened. And none of this "You'll have to call again on Monday morning to see if there's an emergency slot available" rubbish!
The rest of the day was - thankfully - uneventful. We'd decided that we were all a bit too tired to venture out for the evening, so after dinner I played "Good Grandma" and had all of the children in my apartment to play board games until they couldn't think any more - and so to bed!

Wonder what today will bring?!

[Lizilu20]

Lovely to hear that you all arrived safely and are settled in. Poor Lilly, what a disaster but good to know that Doctor Cenk came to the rescue. Hope she's painfee today. Looking forward to catching up soon and thanks for posting. I'm already greedy for your next instalment. 

[Bob & Jayne]

SO glad your all settled in RosiB and sorry to hear about poor lily's tooth, glad that all is sorted now. Looking forward to hearing your next instalment too. Promise I'll do mine soon! Wasn't for the want of trying though! 

[RosiB]

Yesterday morning I made my coffee and came out on to the balcony to write a blog entry. It was fairly long - took me about twenty minutes to write - so imagine the frustration I felt when I clicked the preview button and it disappeared into cyberspace! Today, you're going to get an unedited version!

The last couple of days have been a mix of complete chilling with a bit of adrenalin excitement ( for some!). Anyone who knows me will know that the second part of that sentence isn't likely to be about me! Yesterday was Stevie's birthday and he wanted to try jet skiing; I'm not exactly your Lara Croft type, so I volunteered to stay here with any of the children who didn't want to go so the boys went off to be macho and the girls stayed to work on their suntans. They said they had a great time; they went to the Indigo beach club to do it.

We've had a couple of meals out already. On Sunday evening we walked down to the village so that they could see some of Kalkan and ate at Hunkar which was good. I think the milkshakes at Kleo after walking through town were a bigger hit though! It was great to meet so many old friends on the way down, but it does seem very quiet in town - such a pity! Yesterday evening, Steve wanted to eat in a roof terrace restaurant and we went to Alternatif. Teddy (6 years old) managed to ask for pasta before falling asleep for the rest of the evening - so there IS a good reason not to be an adrenalin junkie!

On the home front, Bill has managed to lock himself out of the house, resulting in having to call out a locksmith to get back in, AND he's broken the bridge on his teeth and now has to get that fixed before flying out on Wednesday! He's told me that he managed to cut the grass without incident, though - I don't know whether to believe him or not!

[Lizilu20]

Ah RosiB, just goes to show that a man is lost without his woman  , let's hope that no further calamaties strike before he gets on the plane to join you and the family.

Sounds like the kids and the big kids are having a fab time.

What's going on with the blogs? I've lost my blog many times and know how frustrating it is. I always try to copy now before I press post for that reason. Well when I remember that is 

Looking forward to catching up very soon...

[RosiB]

Just as well I'm an early riser - it's now 05:20 and I've been up for the last hour, waiting for Bill to arrive. This really is the most amazing time of the day; I love watching the mountains grow out of the blackness as the sun comes up behind them;  it's even more dramatic this morning as we've also got a power cut!

I think it's got hotter and hotter over the last couple of days; it's also very humid, so staying around the pool has been no problem. Yesterday, in fact, the children put up no arguments when we suggested going indoors for a while to get out of the heat, so it must be HOT!

I had coffee at The Junction after getting some shopping the other day - what a lovely place! I don't think that will have been my only visit! AND the coffee is VERY good!

I suspect that Bill will want to go out to eat tonight so will have more to write next time. He's just arrived, so I'll finish off here.

[onelove]

Hi RosiB,

Hope you have a fab time with your family & the little ones.
We have just got back home after 3 weeks with 2 of our daughters, 2 out-laws and........6 grandkids.....8 and under...... great great time, man are we knackered 😴😴😴😴

Good luck 👍😂

[RosiB]

I have been VERY remiss about blogging lately!

As I said, Bill arrived last Thursday; he must be getting old, because he hasn't been quite as chaotic as usual! Or maybe  five children beat even him into submission! He wanted to eat out on Thursday evening so we went to Agora.What a lovely evening we had! The food and service are as good as ever and Guven entertained the children with card tricks, which they've been trying to emulate ever since - with little success! A walk down to Kleo for milkshakes (compulsory!) and everyone was happy.
On Saturday we went on the Kaya mountain BBQ trip. It looked a bit ominous, but a quick call to Erol assured us that it was fine and wouldn't rain! Oh dear!! What can I say? Well, it's warmer in the pool than out of it, when it rains THAT much! It got so cold we had to light a fire and there were mutterings of "We're going to need hot chocolate soon." Despite a deluge of biblical proportions, they still managed to produce the most varied and delicious meze and fabulous BBQ - if you haven't done this trip yet, you must!
On Sunday, we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary.Regular readers will know that Bill is NOT the best at remembering, but this year he hasn't been allowed to forget it. We had booked both Kalamaki boats and invited lots of friends to join us, including Lizilu, Automan and their family and Shirl and Bob, and a great day it was. The weather was perfect - just as well as we didn't have a plan B, had it been as bad as Saturday! The crew did us proud with amazing food at lunchtime and just before coming back into the harbour produced a delicious celebration cake! The only thing missing from the day was a sighting of turtles - maybe next time!

After two full on days, we decided yesterday should be a bit more relaxed, so spent it round the pool and catching up on shopping, etc. I'm glad we hadn't gone out, as the heavens opened again! I've never known rain like it in Kalkan in August, at least in such quantities! We're planning a trip to Saklikent Gorge today, so hopefully it'll be fine for it - the river might be a bit high or fast otherwise!

Other news - Rachel and Stevie have met with a wedding planner and scouted out some venues, but have come to the conclusion that they'd like to be married here in the gardens of the Yelken! We won't have far to go for that, then!

[keith]

Another great report RosieB. I can't say that I'm sorry that I've missed the heavy downpours that Kalkan has been experiencing. I'm hoping that normal service will be restored for our next visit in September. Having said that the weather back in the UK has been very unseasonal. Feels more like autumn.

[Bob & Jayne]

Fab report RosiB and thank you for inviting us to share your special day with you. It was fabulous.  . Hope you all enjoyed Saklikent Gorge, we're hoping to go next week.

J&B