Antalya Airport to Olympos Beach transfer
Olympos Beach closes off the mouth of a narrow valley, and you arrive at it through the ruins: the ancient city lies scattered along a stream under fig trees and oleander, and the path out to the water runs past walls, tombs and a Roman gateway. The shore itself is coarse pebble with a quick drop into deep, clear water, and the same protected bay continues north towards Çıralı. Behind the site the valley is full of wooden bungalows and treehouse lodges, so the crowd on the shingle is more often backpackers and day visitors than hotel guests.
From Kemer the turning is 28 km down the D400, and the valley road below it another eleven kilometres of unwinding bends: about forty minutes in all. Tekirova is half an hour out, Konyaaltı an hour and five minutes, central Antalya an hour and a quarter, Belek an hour and forty. From Side it is a little over two hours each way, so a full day, and from Alanya it is not sensible at all. Most people pair it with Çıralı, the north end of the same bay, or with Yanartaş above. A coach gives you an allotted hour; a car lets you arrive before the middle of the day, when the valley is cool and the car park has room.
Landing and coming here directly is 98 km and about an hour and 25 minutes, but remember that cars stop at the site car park: from there it is a quarter of an hour on foot along the stream to the shingle. That is fine with a day bag and awkward with cases, so arrival day works for the valley bungalows and not for a swim en route to Kemer, which the detour does not suit anyway.
Visiting Olympos Beach
Allow three hours from the gate and nothing about the visit is rushed. The path in follows the stream through the site, and you stop as often as you walk: a doorway standing on its own in the greenery, sarcophagi with their inscriptions still legible, the theatre's seats half lost in scrub, then the old harbour channel opening onto the shingle. Swim, come back along the other bank, and you have seen both halves of the city. An hour buys you the water and none of the ruins. Gate hours shift with the season, so they are worth confirming before the car is booked rather than at the barrier.
The path is packed earth and loose stone, level the whole way but crossed by the stream where the bed is shallow and slippery, so sandals you do not mind soaking are the sensible footwear. The shore at the end is coarse grey pebble, steeper than it looks from up the valley, and the bottom drops away within a couple of strides. Behind it the valley holds proper shade, fig and oleander along the water and pine up the slopes, which is why the walk in stays cool in August while the shingle has nothing over it at all.
This is part of a nesting bay, so the shore is closed to visitors after dark in season, lights are kept off it, and stretches of it are marked out during the day. Everything arrives and leaves through the one gate, and that is what settles the booking: the car can stay in the entrance car park, because the visit has a known end and there is no second way out for a driver to be sent to. Yanartaş, on the slope above the valley, works as the evening half if you are sleeping down here; from a hotel up the coast it is one or the other.
- Sandals you can soak beat trainers here, because the path crosses the stream and the last stretch is loose stone.
- Look at the city on the way in rather than on the way out, since after a swim nobody walks back uphill to read inscriptions.
- All the shade is on the path and none of it at the water, so a picnic belongs fifty metres back from the shingle.
- Ask what time the gate shuts as you go in, because the way out is the same path and it is dark under the trees long before it is dark on the water.