How we got to Antalya (Turkey)

Antalya is a city located on the southwestern Mediterranean coast of Turkey. It's the capital city of the province of Antalya.

I'll tell you a story about our highlight of this trip through Turkey and then show you some nice photos from Antalya.😋

Before arriving in Antalya, we were in Istanbul and we had to decide how to get to Antalya. There were a few options: by plane (easiest, fastest and quite cheap), by bus (cheap, long drive, but you can enjoy the sceneries through the window) and hitchhiking (slow, hard, but you experience a lot, get to know people and your heart is happy). So, the decision fell on the last one!

We went to the last station in Istanbul by metro and found a road that goes in the direction we want. Since Antalya is very far (around 700km) from Istanbul, we decided to ask people if they can drop us off at the city called Bursa which is a little more than 100km away from Istanbul. So we left our bags on the ground and raised our thumbs up. 👍

Cars immediately stopped one after another, we didn't expect that people are so outgoing here. One guy picked us up and he didn't speak English so we used google translator for communication. 😅 But even with that I don't know if he understood what we were doing so he dropped us off by some ferry and told us that we can continue on our way here.

We almost gave up, but we couldn't go back to Istanbul or any other bigger city because there were no buses there. We felt hopeless, but I told Denis that we should try to ask someone if we can go on this ferry for free. We talked to some guy who seemed very happy and kind, and he let us go without a hitch. We couldn't believe we managed to hitchhike a ferry. 😁

hitchhiked a ferry

Next step was to find someone on the ferry who's going to Bursa. The last man who came off the ferry was going to Bursa and he picked us up. We were so happy and excited. Driver was our age and he seemed very nice. We mostly listened to Turkish music while driving. 🔊 He drove quite fast at some moments and at one point police stopped us. Policeman talked to us and after a few questions he just smiled and said "Welcome to my country!" 😁
Our driver on the other hand recieved a great fine, but it seemed that he didn't mind a lot, probably he has money to throw away.

So we came to Bursa, went to eat something and decided to take a bus to Antalya, because hitchiking tired us out. 😅 But, that was our favourite part of the whole trip through Turkey, because we went out of our comfort zone and it was so fun and adventurous.

After we arrived in Antalya we were just exploring this city and took some photos.