Antalya Airport to Alanyum Shopping Center transfer
Alanyum is Alanya's main shopping centre, standing on the main road that carries everything through the town. For a resort strip whose alternatives are the seafront shops and the weekly market, it is the indoor option: one cooled building in which an errand takes twenty minutes instead of an afternoon of walking between awnings. Most of the people using it live in Alanya or are staying for a month rather than a week. What is inside changes as leases change, so treat it as a shopping centre rather than a list of names, and expect a local mall rather than a resort attraction.
From Antalya Airport it is 130 km and about an hour and 50 minutes, all on the D400. The road keeps inland of the beaches for most of the way — Serik, the Manavgat bridge, then the resort belt around Okurcalar and Avsallar — and the last stage is the built-up ribbon where the highway becomes the street Alanya lives on. That is the slow part, and it is slow in the middle of the day as well as in the evening. The compensation is that you stop on that road rather than beyond it, so nobody has to cross the town to reach the door.
Visiting Alanyum Shopping Center
The case for coming is the middle of the day. Alanya runs hotter and more humid than the coast west of it, the promenade gives shade only in patches, and from about noon until four in high summer an air-conditioned building is a better idea than another hour on the sand. Out of season the argument turns over: on a wet week in March or November this is where a family in an apartment spends a morning, which is why long-stay visitors use it far more than package guests do. Either way it is weather that fills it, not window shopping.
Two hours is the honest figure, three if a meal or a film is involved, and nobody spends a day here. From a hotel in the town that makes it a simple out-and-back with the car waiting at the door. From Side, Belek or the airport side it is close to two hours of driving each way, and shopping alone never repays that: make the centre the first hour of an Alanya day and let the castle, the harbour or the eastern beaches take the rest, on the same car and the same fare, with the bags already in the boot before you walk anywhere.
Think about what leaves with you. If the reason for the trip is a suitcase, a pushchair, a month's groceries for a rented flat or quantities of anything, say so at the booking, because a full boot and four passengers are not the same vehicle. Leave what you buy in the car instead of carrying it round for the rest of the day — the driver is parked, and the harbour is no place for shopping bags. And if the errand is really one particular chain, it is worth checking whether it also trades in Manavgat, which is an hour closer to the Side hotels.
- Two hours is what a visit actually takes, so fix the pickup for the hour you will finish rather than the hour you hope to.
- It is indoors and cooled, which is the entire reason to choose it over the seafront in the middle of a July afternoon.
- Leave the shopping in the car before going on anywhere else; the castle and the harbour are no place to be carrying bags.
- The busy road outside is the awkward part, so agree one meeting point at the entrance instead of arranging to be found.