Hi Roma
You have picked a lovely place to have a vacation, although a very hilly location, so i hope that you are fit,

Sorry, can't help you much more than that as i have never stayed there, ( just visited ) but you won't have any trouble with veggie dishes, my neighbour went there and he's a vegertarian and had no problem at all, he / they loved the place.

Have a good time

Cheers kev

Just search for Kalkan in the Turkey forum. Lots of info. I have a villa in Kalkan and am going on 23rd April for 5 weeks. I've yet to find a bad restaurant in Kalkan. Both my daughters are vegetarian and they have always found plenty of good food to eat. One good day out is a boat trip.

hi roma,
sorry, im not replying to your questions,i just got a surprise when i saw your name,as this is also my daughters name,and its a name that you dont here of very much,sorry for going ,happy holidays.

Hi roma, If you go to page 3 of this discussion you will find a piece I wrote which will give you my recommended Restaurants. Patara Beach is a dolmus ride away and one of the finest beaches i've ever seen. Do the Truck Safari. Go to Saklikent Gorge for the day by dolmus this went at 1030 hrs and you return at 1600 hrs. There is a trip to Kekova and Myra. At Kekova there is plenty to see above ground but the sunken city wasn't so hot. At Myra there is a superb Amphitheatre and Rock Tombs. At Kas, a pleasant dolmus ride down the coast, there is an Amphitheatre and Tombs. Get the AA Essential Turkey South Coast Book, we found it extremely useful. Just for the record, we are returning to Kalkan in September, to the same Hotel. Hope you find this information of some use to you. Enjoy your holiday when it happens, we will !!

Les

Thanks for the suggestions Cruisecontroller and others - really helpful and we'll follow some of them up.

Hi Bibbs - I chose Roma as a metaphor for "Roamer" because I like roaming about! I'm definitely the wrong sex and far, far too old to be a contemporary of your daughter's!

There's some really helpful information on this site (as with other HT Forums) and it's great to go to new places with a good idea of where to eat and what to do......so thanks everyone!

hi roma,
sorry for getting your sex wrong,it's usually me that gets called a woman here on ht,and as ive mentioned before i most certainly am not,ive checked,lol,at least i was right about my daughters name tho,it is rare,all the best,happy hols.

We've just got back this morning after five weeks in Kalkan. There have been quite a few changes, restaurants moving and new ones opening. Omar has moved from the harbour and has opened next door to the Nur hotel. He seems to be very busy, especially on market day. Adam has moved to a new restaurant built next door to his house on the Kas road. Lovely views from there. If you phone Adam he will pick you up from your hotel or villa and then take you back. We found a new restaurant, the Extinct, next to Fred's, round the corner from the Kaya. Serves just fish and salad, but very cheap and good. Three guys from the Aubergine have opened a new restaurant. It's called Trio. It's a bit expensive, but very good.
I'm back "home" in Kalkan in two weeks.

Which airport do you fly into for Kalkan? And can anyone recommend a small hotel (B&B)?

We are looking to go to Kalkan in early September. We have been to Olu for the past three years and although we love it there, it's time for a change and Kalkan seems to be the next obvious choice.

Is it on a par with Olu with regards to being busy/built up as we certainly don't want anything livelier than Olu!!

Mrs Gannet

If you're looking for a nice B&B hotel take a look at the Meldi. The nearest airport is Dalaman. Independantly run and if you stay for 7 nights or more return transfers to Dalaman are included. September is probably the hotels busiest month so don't delay. You can check out the reviews on the Kalkan Forum of Trip Advisor - for what it's worth I'm going back for my 4th stay in September. The website is http://www.meldihotel.com/

There's a fair amount of new build (villas and apartments only - no high rise) on the hills above the town but Kalkan itself is relatively unspoilt and has a great selection of restaurants and shops.

Hi Taxman,

Can you tell me where the Meldi is from the Samira - not the de luxe but the one nearer the town?

Thanks

Chillout

Turn up the Kalamar Road and the Meldi is about a 5-7 minute walk along the road on the left.

I've just booked the Meldi Hotel for October. Very simple, a couple of emails and a phone call and everything is sorted. Payment made in resort, and because I am staying for 7 nights the airport transfer is included. The reviews on Tripadvisor and elsewhere are excellent. I'm counting down the days already.

Me again

Has anyone stayed at the Paper Moon Hotel in Kalkan - I can't find any reviews anywhere!

We missed out on one hotel as we didn't commit to booking in time

Thanks in advance

I will be in Kalkan at the Samira Deluxe from the 4 of August.
Is it worth bringing towels or are they very cheap in Turkey.
Another option is only bringing a few and having them laundered is there a laundry in Kalkan?

Hi Mrs Gannet - just returned from Kalkan yesterday and stayed opposite the Paper Moon. It looked fine and we spoke to some people who were staying there who were happy with it. You probably know it's at the top of a long hill (where isn't in Kalkan?) but we did a fortnight without surrendering to a taxi so it can't be that bad.

It's on the way to Kalamar Beach Club (which we thought the best) from Kalkan and the taxi will pick you up and drop you off for free so that saves the walking on some days!

Thank you roma. We booked it last night anyway as I was getting anxious about flights! We also found one review on another travel site and it seemed OK

Counting down to September now

Back from a weeks holiday in Kalkan last Tuesday.

We had booked our accommodation and transfers direct with the hotel on-line as we did with our 'red-eye' flights with Monarch after XL had cancelled our original return flight with 2 weeks to go-(thanks XL!)

This was our first visit to Kalkan having previously been to Turunc (x3), Icmeler, Calis and Bitez.

Accomodation

We stayed at the Kelebek hotel which is situated on the same street as the weekly market (opposite end to the mosque) and just off the coast road.

The hotel is small (20 rooms) and very well run by a friendly and helpful English speaking Turkish family.
The rooms are basic but very clean with maid service and clean towels every day.

For £8 pppn we received an en-suite sea view room with balcony, air conditioning and Turkish breakfast included.

The pool wasn't huge and reflected the size of the hotel but as there were not many other guests during our stay, we had the pool area to ourselves much of the time-it was almost like having our own private villa-and the views from the pool area was great.

Breakfast is taken on the rooftop terrace, with even better views over the bay.

At least one member of the family was always on hand in case you needed anything but they were never intrusive.

There was a small poolside bar which was an ideal place to start and finish the evening with a drink and a chat with other guests or one or two of the family tending bar.

We ate at the hotel on our first night and the food was excellent.

We had no complaints at all about this hotel and would recommend it to anyone looking for good value basic accommodation who doesn't mind the trek up the hill from the centre (of course you could always get a taxi..)

Night time Restaurants
Restaurant reviews are always a bit subjective but for what it's worth this is our brief opinions on the one's we tried
Paparazzi - Not bad but nothing special
Atlantis - Great steaks but service was slow- food took over 45 minutes to arrive but hey we weren't in a hurry and the wine was nice!
Oz Adana - Basic surroundings and facilities but excellent Turkish cuisine and very reasonable priced
Belgins Kitchen- Nice food, nice atmosphere though romantic mood spoilt a bit by the disco music from Ice Bar opposite.
Arena - Great food, reasonably priced, nice views
Beyzergins (sp?) Kitchen (diagonally opposite the taxi rank)- Mrs Scoobyclaret enjoyed her meal but I was very disappointed with mine but it was cheap and probably worth the money for the complimentary plate of mezze and fresh baked bread.

Out and about

Spent our first afternoon at the Ibo beach club just taking in the views over a couple of Efes and a nice lunch.
We took the free boat to Palm Beach club for one day which was good.

Did a boat trip aboard 'The Falcon' on our penultimate day - the sea was a bit choppy and we didn't go too far just a few bays for a swim stop and to the mud beach for a mud bath (takes 5 years off you appparantly but Mrs Scoobyclaret isn't convinced it worked for me and said I should probably have asked for a refund)

We took the dolmus to Kas and back-best 3 lira we spent all week as the 35 minute journey along the coast road is spectacular. We liked Kas, although a few hours was enough to visit the harbour, take in the sea views and wander around.

Bars

We only visited a few, Moonlight, Utopia, Ice Bar (for the England game) and Sandals.
Utopia was our favourite, good music and a great location for sitting outside for a spot of people watching over a few cold beers or a glass of wine or two.

Prices
We were pleasantly surprised that the prices didn't seem too bad at all. To say 'Kalkan is more expensive than other resorts' is a bit of a generalisation we felt. You can eat and drink cheaply or expensively or somewhere in between in all resorts and we didn't think Kalkan was any different.
We were paying between 3- 4.5 lira for a large beer, - less than £2 for nearly a pint of decent strength lager isn't bad ( and this from someone who prefers real ale back home)
Main meal prices ranged from £7 - £10, lunches £3-£6-hardly excessive.

The not so good and maybe slightly controversial bit

There were many things we liked about Kalkan but we have to say we were a little disappointed that contrary to what seems to be popular opinion we didn't find the locals we encountered particularly friendly.

Comparisons with other resorts we have visited are inevitable and we have always been used to restaurant and bar staff, shop owners, etc. stopping and chatting with you, making small talk, joking about football or our poor attempts at speaking Turkish but we didn't come across much of that during our stay- if you tried to greet any of the restaurant or bar staff in Turkish they would just answer you in English so we gave up trying to practice our Turkish after a few days.

We are polite and friendly with people we meet and don't think it was anything we were doing (or not doing) which caused this seemingly indifferent attitude towards us but we just never got the same interaction which had made our previous holidays to Turkey so memorable and enjoyable in places such as Turunc.
.

In Conclusion

To be honest I think it took us a few days to 'get' Kalkan.

It is a larger resort than we expected and maybe this is why (in our opinion) it seemed more impersonal but overall we did enjoy ourselves and the weather was great.

Despite some reservations I think we would return to Kalkan if we could find a bargain deal but it's more likely to be Olu Deniz and/or Dalyan for us next year.

If your still with us, thank you for taking the time to read this.

Happy Holidays!

Interesting post. Thanks. Have often wondered about Kalkan. Thanks

Denny

I loved Kalkan and I loved how you don't get 'hassle'. I think maybe the people who work/live there are anxious not to be considering to be hassling anyone and so refrain from the banter a bit too.

We had wonderful banter from the hotel staff so going out and about it was nice to just get a nod of the head and good evening from people rather than anything else.

It's something I hadn't really thought about to be honest. Good post though, very balanced view. Thanks.