I would love to say that the weather improved over night, but aside from the fact that it had stopped raining, we awoke to pretty much the same as yesterday. Debs cold hadn't improved overnight either, if anything she was worse than the day before. It was looking very fortunate that we only had a short distance to cycle today.
Not wanting to impose ourselves too early on Silvia and Rob, we loaded up our bikes, left them behind the hotel and went to have a walk round the town. The wind had become quite strong during the morning, so we had a fairly blustery stroll along the sea front. Alanya castle and its ramparts are an impressive sight, but a combination of the awful conditions and Debs' lack of energy meant that a walk up the steep hill was a step too far.
Instead we wandered back along the seafront, stopped and had a look at some interesting sculptures and then went for a simit and çay.
Back at the hotel I called Rob to let him know that we would be about 2hrs. The line was terrible and I could only hear about half of his replies, so we left it that I would call again if we got lost. The ride out of Alanya was awful, into a strong headwind and persistent rain, we were very glad that we didn't have far to go.
As it turns out we had rather less distance to go than I had thought. In less than 10km we arrived in Mahmutlar. If we had known it was this close to Alanya, we would have carried on yesterday. Our map had clearly shown that we had over 20km to go, if only I had tried to ring Rob yesterday!
Arriving outside what we believed to be Silvia and Robs building, I attempted another phone call and we soon saw Rob waving at us from their apartment balcony. Shortly afterwards Rob was downstairs to let us in and help us get our gear upstairs. Fortunately the apartment building has a lift as carrying all our stuff to the 7th floor would have been a challenge. Although it was a bit of a squeeze, we then fitted the bikes into the lift and took them up to their floor. Rob was concerned that they wouldn't be safe left downstairs.
Their apartment is lovely, with a terrific view over the sea. It was just a shame that the weather was so bad. After we had showered and got changed, we all took a walk into the town centre to visit the Saturday market. Mahmutlar appears to be a bustling little town, which according to Rob has changed a lot in the seven years they have had an apartment there.
Having bought some food and, more importantly, wine we returned to the apartment. The rest of the day was spent chatting, eating a lovely meal prepared by Silvia and having the odd glass of wine. Unfortunately Debs is still full of cold, so at around 9:30pm she went to bed and I followed shortly after. Hopefully if she is feeling a little better, we will go for a walk in the hills behind Mahmutlar tomorrow.
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