Turkey Discussion Forum

Discussions regarding holidays in Turkey.
How much to take
16 Posts
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I always find it is the meals which burn through our spending money.
Turkey always offers good value meals (if you look for offers) so I would say it is enough depending on how much you eat out, especially if you're not big drinkers.
£600 each is £42 a day (assuming 2 weeks), just watch your daily budget.
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Thank you for the quick reply.
I doubt we will be eating out everynight..we have heard a lot of turkish food has lemon in ( dont know how much of that is true ) so i really dont think eating out will be done everynight
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can't see I've experienced the lemon food?

Turkish food is great (in my opinion) and well priced. Beer is on average about £1.80 a pint.
Wine is hit and miss. It's imported drinks which are the expense, stay local and drink Efes :)
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Lol must have just been someone telling us porkies lol.
None of us drink wine any way normally just a beer with a meal..and that dont change when we go to a foreign country either lol.
1.80 a pint is pretty good :)
Hopefully we should be okay
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What!!
Lemon Turkish food!!!
This sounds absurd until you take the time to research Turkish cuisine, which like most middle-eastern cuisine, uses lamb and chicken marinated in lemon juice as well as various herbs, onions, and seasoning.
The lemon juice tenderises the meat and gives it a lovely flavour, ideal for preparing chicken/meat for kebabs. Lemon juice is also added to many sauces/casseroles, but if you care to check on any cook books being used in the UK today you will find that lemon juice is used in many savoury recipes.
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I can't say I have found lemon particularly noticeable. They use many lovely herbs and spices to flavour the food. If you are good at budgetting you will be OK there. Look for cafes away from the main streets and sea front and look for where there are lots of Turkish families. Check the prices on the menues before you start. That sounds obvious but there are places where the prices are not obvious and it is illegal not to display them. Boat trips are often really good value with drinks and lunch thrown in. One useful tip is to take a plastic funnel and a drinks bottle. Buy the largest you can carry water bottle from the super market and decant water into your smaller one for days out. It's amazing what you will save over 2 weeks. Turkish bread is still fairly cheap and so are salad vegetables so making sandwiches for lunch is easy enough. We always take a cool bag with us. My kids who are also students like to take a few cans to the beach at night and regularly meet up with Turkish students doing the same thing. They often have guitars and sit around singing - they love all that. Have a great time.
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The tip on buying your own cans/bottles of beer is a good one, don't go to bars for alcohol is really expensive there, go to Tansas or any other big supermarket and buy your drink there.
When we went we also had a tight budget so we opted for small Turkish cafes away from the seafront, taking a little while to explore the many winding side streets around Marmaris that other tourists miss,for seafront restaurants are always quite expensive.
Turkish bagels are cheap and delicious, much moreso than the ones we buy over here, so use these to make sandwiches, or, we would just fill a tupperware dish with salad ingredients and tuna/feta-style-cheese, dress it with a little lemon juice and olive oil (if you like olive oil on your salads take a small well sealed bottle with you from the UK, it costs a bomb over there) and buy some freshly baked bagels as we walked to the beach. It's so easy and quick, much quicker in fact than waiting ages for service in a packed restaurant.
Make sure that you pack as many items as you can from the UK, such as coffee, tea, cereal - for this is also very expensive, and travel lightly with other items so that your luggage isn't overweight, keeping in mind that it is illegal to pack perishables - meat, cheese, etc.
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I'm sure you will want to go to a few bars as it's fun and that is why you go on holiday lol. Just check the price list before you buy and Efes beer shouldn't be more than 4 or 5 lira. They usually give you a dish of nibbles to go with it.
I think you'll have enough money to last the holiday, just set a daily budget after you have taken out the costs of any trips. Now here's another tip - you could consider going on an ordinary bus for a day out. There is a bus station in Marmaris and you'll find a list of destinations with timetables. Public transport is pretty good. Places to visit from Marmaris include anywhere on the Bozburun peninsula. Bozburun itself, Selimiye, Orhaniye etc. They are all very pretty places. Also Datca just over an hour over spectacular mountains is a nice little harbour town. The bus fare is likely to be much cheaper than organised tours and you'll still have a great time.
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Going to bars can be fun but when my husband and I went to Marmaris a few weeks ago it was just too expensive, and the staff always put pressure on to buy more drinks, making us feel guilty because we couldn't afford to. Also just because someone is young doesn't mean they will want to hang around bars. We spent most of our time exploring the local area, taking picnics, and enjoying our evenings walking along the beach, perhaps having a glass or two of the local beer bought from the supermarket sitting out on our balcony at night.
Ardath is spot on about the bagels, we ate loads, and have not been able to find any as good in the UK.
Anyway, you will manage just fine with your budget, so enjoy your hols!!
:)
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Thank you all for tips :) I doubt we will go into the pubs much tbf, even though we are young neither of us really drink unless its a beer with a meal. Even when we go out with friends we stick to coke. ( gosh we must sound boring lol )

Really looking forward to going now :)
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I don't think i've seen these bagels? :think are they the round crispy things with sesame seeds on top or are they like bagels you get over here? sounds like i missed out! :really
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I don't suppose that they are called bagels over there, but they are round with a hole in the middle, and sesame seeds on top, a bit larger than traditional bagels, and much browner.
All my family are bagel mad so they loved the bread.
Am not sure if anyone here knows what they are actually called in Turkey???? :que
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We went self catering this year for the first time. We bought fruit and bread and cheese for breakfasts and lunch and had a few beers in the villa. We ate out EVERY night and had a glass of wine or beer with dinner, and usually went for some drinks afterwards (although not particularly heavy drinking sessions - except one night ;) )

We went on a few trips and bought a few clothes.

Our spending money worked out at £1,400 for the two of us so I reckon £1,200 is doable!
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ardath, i think your talking about simits!? i love them, yum lol, like with soft cheese! another roll i like is acma (achma) its like puff pastry a bit and swivelled kinda shape, delish with jam!
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My neighbour has just come back from Oludeniz, and reckons she only spent £400 for the fortnight, by
booking boat trips and excursions with food included.
She stayed self catering, and bought fresh bread and local cheeses for breakfast and ate well on the excursions.
On days she didn't go out, she made packed lunches for on the beach, and cooked simple meals in the apartment.
She doesn't drink much, so saved money on booze.
We are going to Ovacik in September, and have already booked excursions and boat trips from the same company she used
in Fethiye, and saved a lot of money booking them on-line, and in advance.
I am interested to see if we can live as cheaply as she did. We'll see!!
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