Romantic and Nautical! Three nights on a yacht in the Aegean Sea.
Spending three nights on a gulet (a traditional Turkish sailing yacht) while on our recent anniversary trip to Turkey was the most romantic and decadent thing Napper and I have ever done. And so worth every dollar! I couldn't recommend it more. Our new Turkish friend Adviye of Aida Tours knows all there is to know about traveling in Turkey and in addition to advising and organizing other aspects of our trip, she found a fantastic gulet with a lovely crew of two for a very fair price-- and worked around the fact that we only wanted (and could only afford!) to go for three nights as most yachts only book week long charters...
We showed up at the marina in Bodrum and took a short golf cart ride down to our gulet for the next three days which was docked right in front of the glorious and majestic Bodrum castle.
Adviye's team had organized all of our groceries (and wine!) for the trip, so after a champagne toast, we were off!
Napper and I took a million pictures and kept remarking how fabulous this all was and we felt so lucky. After cruising along, we stopped at a gorgeous cove, dropped anchor and lunch was served-- a feast of chicken and mezes and rose wine. After lunch, we swam in the perfectly blue and super salty Aegean, lounged on the sunbeds on the front of the boat, swam, read, had more wine, swam, rested, repeat.
We moved locations for dinner and the night, to a more popular cove which was more crowded with boats than I would have liked. And sadly for us, a gorgeous HUGE vintage motor yacht dropped anchor next to us for the evening. Aboard, were about 20 Russians who literally had a drunken disco on their boat until 4AM. Aside from the fact that they were 50 yards from us, noise carries on water.... Finally drifted to sleep with ear plugs in.
The next day, our captain Sercan, took us to an uninhabited fantastically beautiful cove with a high peak sloping down to pine trees that dissolved into a grey pebbly beach. We stayed for lunch and when Sercan moved to pull up anchor, we decided we'd rather stay and have this paradise to ourselves for the night.
That night, after Ali, the first mate and chef's delicious dinner and lots of wine and backgammon, we made beds up top and with the exception of a canvas tarp, slept out on the sea. I loved it!
Sercan would shuttle us to land to walk around and explore the hiking trails in our flip flops and bathing suits, but we spent the majority of our time swimming and reading.
It was incredibly relaxing and luxurious to not have to think about what to eat, when to eat, how to get there, what to wear-- we did not have to think about anything except for whether to have white wine or rose with our meals and whether it was time to swim again... I can't wait to go back for a longer voyage!!
