Kadriye → Side Transfer

Kadriye to Side private transfer

People staying in Kadriye already have shops, cafés and a market street on their doorstep, so they rarely travel for an evening out. They travel for the things Kadriye has no room for: an ancient town you can walk through, the Roman theatre and the columns above the sea, the museum, the harbour where the boat trips leave from, and a bazaar big enough for leather and carpets. Add the Manavgat river a few kilometres beyond, and the fact that a good share of Kadriye's beds are apartments and small hotels with no excursion desk to sell anyone a coach seat, and this becomes a morning leg more often than a late one.

The car comes to a door here rather than to a lobby: a lane in the village, the step of an apartment block, one of the small hotels along the boulevard. The climb out to the D400 is the short one — a couple of kilometres of forest road rather than the long descent the beach resorts sit at the bottom of. Then it is east across open country, with Aspendos signposted inland at the river bridge and stalls selling juice and cut fruit wherever there is room to pull in. The transfer from Kadriye to Side is 50 km and around 50 minutes, and the ordinary way to finish it is to be set down outside the old walls and walk in from there.

• Give the street and a landmark for the pickup: several Kadriye hotels share similar names and the village side streets are not all obvious from the boulevard.
• Say whether you want the bazaar end of the old town or the theatre end: they are at opposite ends of the headland, and choosing the wrong one costs you the walk back.
• For a boat trip, leave more time than the drive needs — the harbour end of Side moves slowly on foot in high summer.
• Coming back with bazaar purchases is the moment people wish they had booked the larger car; a rug or a suitcase of ceramics takes real space.