What the Media Say About Kalkan
Daily Telegraph 2015
​
Until the 1920s Kalkan was a tiny Greek fishing village; by the 1980s it had morphed into a bohemian resort for arty Turks fleeing big city life. Some of its past has clung on despite its transformation into a sophisticated resort favoured by Brits. They are drawn by its beguiling setting, dropping down a hillside to a small yacht harbour fronting a picturesque bay, pretty fishermen’s cottages, cosy restaurants and chic café-bars. Kalkan is also appreciated for what isn’t here – no rowdy bars, no clubs, no full English breakfasts. The village beach is small, but the sands of Patara are very close, as is stunning Kaputas.
Daily Mail 2014
​
Patara's hidden depths sit comfortably beside nearby Kalkan's more obvious charms. The little port is packed with gulets, converted fishing boats and assorted pleasure craft touting for human cargo with the promise of 'dining under the stars', 'all-day trips of magic' and such like. Banked steeply above the harbour - with the Taurus mountains behind - the rest of the mainly car-free town variously purrs and fizzes, its limestone streets and alleyways polished to a sheen by millions of feet over hundreds of years. Roof-top restaurants vie for business but you never feel hassled by frontmen wearing dodgy bow ties as you do in other tourist hubs.
The Times 2014
​
Night-time. Isn’t that always when magic happens? I sit on my tiny wooden balcony, on a sleepy backstreet in Kalkan’s pretty old town, and smell the jasmine and lavender wafting up from the garden below. Music drifts on the warm air; jazz seeping down from a rooftop restaurant, blurring with something pacier from the Moonlight bar, where I can picture the tables set neatly on the street, barmen whisking between them with dewy glasses of cold Efes and crisp, white Cankaya wine. There’s something in the air in Kalkan, just like always; warmth, intensity, a thousand specks of light flickering beneath the inky sky.