Side → Manavgat Transfer

Side to Manavgat private transfer

Guests in Side hotels head inland to Manavgat for everything the resort strip does not keep: the district hospital and its outpatient clinics, a dentist, the banks and the notary, the coach station with departures for Konya, Ankara and Istanbul, the weekly market where prices are written for the people who live here, and the restaurants built out on platforms over the river under the plane trees. Side has beach, ruins and hotels. Manavgat has the working town those hotels depend on, and an appointment at nine in the morning is not something a beach road was built for.

Eight kilometres, about 15 minutes. The car leaves the peninsula on the Side access road, past the hotel entrances and the arches of the Roman aqueduct, and meets the D400 at the Manavgat junction. From there it is a short run east on the highway, then the turn into town, over the river bridge and into the streets behind it. The slow parts sit at both ends and never in the middle: the Side lanes in high summer, the bridge and the market streets on a busy morning. After dark the whole thing is ten minutes of empty road.

• Book the outward ride well before a fixed appointment: eight kilometres is nothing, but the river bridge can take twenty minutes on its own.
• Ask about the return leg while you book the first one, because an errand in an unfamiliar town rarely finishes on the street where it started.
• Name the pickup point at your Side hotel — reception, the side entrance or the gate on the main road — since the larger properties have all three.
• Say what you are going in for: the hospital, the bus station and the market are in different parts of Manavgat, and 'the centre' is not an address.