Gazipaşa Airport → Side Transfer

Gazipaşa Airport to Side transfer

Side occupies a low peninsula with a Roman theatre at its neck and the columns of the Temple of Apollo at its tip, and the old quarter is still a lived-in village of lanes, shops and fish restaurants rather than a museum. Very few people choose Gazipaşa-Alanya Airport in order to reach it: GZP lies 105 km east, and the flight usually came first — a summer charter seat, a week split between Alanya and Side, or a return leg that leaves from the other airport. What follows is the long way round to a place most visitors arrive at from the west.

Arrivals at GZP are quick because the hall is small: one terminal, a name sign that is easy to find, and a short walk to the car with your flight already tracked. The road then climbs off the coastal shelf onto the D400 and runs west above the sea through Mahmutlar and Kestel into Alanya, where it becomes the town's main street beneath the castle. Past Konaklı, Avsallar and Okurcalar it opens out towards Manavgat, and the Side junction turns south. Count on 105 km and about 90 minutes; what August adds sits in the Alanya crossing, and night arrivals lose it entirely.

• Say which part of Side you are heading for — the old town, the east beach or the west beach — because kilometres separate them and only the peninsula is closed to cars.
• In season the last stretch onto the peninsula is walked from the barrier, which weighs more after 90 minutes on the road than after a short transfer.
• Ninety minutes each way makes a same-day return to the airport a long day, so plan the last morning around the drive rather than around the beach.
• If you fly home from Antalya Airport instead, that leg is far shorter than the one you arrived on, so do not set the departure time by the journey out.