Antalya Airport to Limyra transfer
Limyra lies on the flat near Finike, with the wall of the Beydağları rising straight behind it. It is not one monument but a scatter: sarcophagi and rock tombs standing about in the fields, lengths of city wall, foundations half lost in grass, and a theatre on the far side of the lane from the main enclosure. The ground is the unusual part — spring water rises through the plain here, it stands in places among the stones, and sections of the site are frankly wet. Few people come. On most days you will share the place with nobody but whoever is working the orchards next door.
Antalya Airport to Limyra measures 132 km and takes about 110 minutes, and what sets the run apart is its last quarter of an hour. The road enters Finike along the front, past the palms and the marina basin, and only here does it truly settle level after a long spell in the hills. The car then turns away from the sea and runs a short way inland across the citrus plain toward Turunçova, orange trees tight against the verge on both sides. The finish is on narrow farm lanes, single width in places, where meeting another vehicle means one of you reversing to a gateway.
Visiting Limyra
An hour is enough here, ninety minutes if you are one of those who reads every stone, and that figure decides how you book. Limyra is too small to carry the drive on its own: sending a car this far for sixty minutes only adds up when the day holds something else, which in practice means Myra and Demre further west, or Finike itself just down the road. The car waits — for a visit this short, a drop-off followed by a second trip out is neither use nor anything anyone wants.
Wet ground is what to prepare for. Spring water comes up through the plain and sits among the ruins, so part of what you came to look at is standing in water or in earth that gives under the foot, and the grass between the elements is long. Closed shoes you do not mind soaking are the right choice; sandals are not. From late spring to autumn that same water brings mosquitoes, and they make themselves felt in the still air under the trees, so something for your arms belongs in the bag.
The visit is a walk between things rather than a circuit around one. The tombs stand apart from each other across flat fields, the walls run off in one direction and the theatre is a separate stop over the lane, so you cover distance steadily without ever climbing. What you get in exchange for the trouble is shade — there are trees here, which most Lycian sites lack — and near-total solitude. It is a quiet, half-overgrown, unpolished place, and those who like that prefer it to the busier ruins along this coast.
- Wear closed shoes that can get soaked: several parts of the site stand in water, and the grass between them holds it too.
- From late spring onwards take insect repellent — the standing water and the tree cover keep mosquitoes about.
- The theatre is on the other side of the lane, so do not finish at the main enclosure believing you have seen everything.
- The trees give real shade, which makes this one of the few sites on the coast that is bearable in the middle of the day.