The goal was to blog once a month and somehow I managed to skip July. So much for consistency, right? In my defence, I was on the road from the last week of April through to the end of June, so perhaps I have not been as terrible as it looks. July was mostly about settling back in and catching up on everything that did not make it onto the critical path but was quietly accumulating in the background. Between May and July, things were not as structured as I had hoped, some of that was the geopolitical noise bleeding into everything but here we are, and I have stories to tell.
Before I get into the travel, I have to mention the fitness routine because it has genuinely taken over my life in the best way possible. I figured that if I was going to be in North America for the summer, I wanted to do something different. I am very much a gym person, but I am learning that not everything has to move fast, real strength often lives in slow, deliberate movement. So I kicked off a six-day-a-week routine with a rest day on Wednesdays, and it covers yoga, kickboxing, functional fitness, strength and conditioning, and Pilates.
I then dialled it up by assigning a different outfit to each discipline. I take it very seriously. I even wear makeup and my finest jewelries to some of these classes, and I am not even slightly embarrassed about that. The studio has genuinely become one of the places where I feel most beautiful. I remember doing my year in review last year and saying I was going to tap back into my vanity. I did not quite know what form that would take, but apparently it involves a coordinated activewear collection and a full face for a 7am Pilates class. It is the good kind of overdoing it.
Yoga in particular has been doing something to me. I am still in a way I genuinely cannot explain, very little fazes me right now, and I am crediting the mat entirely.
In March I needed to get back to the Middle East to sort out some admin, managed to delay it until late April, and then decided that since my birthday was in June and I needed to go back to Turkey for some personal matters anyway, I was going to make a proper trip of it, two full months.
Turkey has become one of my favourite destinations in the world and I do not even feel like a tourist there anymore. When I say it feels like home, I am not exaggerating. There is nothing quite like Turkish hospitality, and I knew that going back to Kaleici to see the friends I made on my last visit was non-negotiable.
They were so happy to see me. There was not a full itinerary this time around, but I will never get tired of Kaleici. There is something about that place that feels like a past life, like I have walked those cobblestoned streets before in a different version of myself.
And then I became a carpet connoisseur. Completely unexpectedly. I have always loved how beautiful Persian and Turkish silk rugs look. I associated them with a particular kind of quiet opulence, but on this trip I actually learned about them. Please do not ask me how many I bought or what I spent, because the moment my reality fully set in I realised it is an extremely collector thing to do, especially considering I do not have an enormous space to display them. But the ones I have put up? I stop and look at the craftsmanship every single time, and somehow they make me want to be home more. Which I suppose is the whole point.
Kaleici beach was also the first official swim of the trip. Just like old times, I loved every second of it.
The last time I was in Fethiye it was low season and not much was happening, so I only managed a day trip to Ölüdeniz. This time it was summer, everywhere was open, buzzing and fully alive. I did not love the overtly touristy parts, but I stayed at one of the most beautiful properties in town. Genuinely exquisite. I wished I had booked longer.
The real story from Ölüdeniz though is that I conquered one of my worst fears. The night before, at a party by the beach, I made a friend who mentioned paragliding was a non-negotiable and that Ölüdeniz is actually one of the most famous paragliding spots in the world. I took his word for it and booked it.
It was the most extraordinary mixture of fear, thrill and pure happiness all at once. The instructor was relaxed and funny and we laughed the whole way through. I genuinely recommend it to anyone sitting on the fence. After that I swam in the ocean, soaked in as much sun as possible, and then it was time to head to Bodrum.
With the past few birthdays I have had, the celebration usually happens after I return from somewhere, which means the enthusiasm is already somewhat deflated by the time it arrives. I wanted to change that this year. I wanted to plan something intentional: dress, shoes, jewellery, the full occasion. I had not done that in years.
While I was in the UAE I shopped for dresses and shoes, with a backup option lined up in case Turkey threw me a curveball. I was very specific about what I wanted, something that leaned into what I call my dolly features. I am a human-sized doll, in case I have never mentioned it, and for some reason I had stopped tending to that part of myself. It was time to bring her back.
I found a stunning structured corset dress and the right shoes to match, which covered the birthday eve look. Then I found a 100% silk Zimmermann dress that I equally loved, and wore that on my actual birthday. Both outfits had a purpose and both delivered.
When I arrived at the property I had booked in Yalikavak, the pictures had done it no justice whatsoever. You could tell immediately that the owner built this place out of genuine passion, not purely for commercial purposes. The space was expansive, the interiors were impeccable, and there was a 360-degree view of the sunset. Arriving there felt like exhaling.
A small side note: when I had mentioned to the guest relations manager in Ölüdeniz that I was heading to Bodrum and staying in Yalikavak, she looked at me and said "oh, you are a five-star person." I thought she was teasing me. I had simply chosen the area because I wanted to be central to everything. Turns out she was absolutely right. I had seen yachts before, but the ones docked at Bodrum were something else entirely.
I had booked Macakizi well in advance, specifically requested the best table for two in the house, explained I was celebrating my birthday, and they delivered exactly that. The table was secluded, facing the water, completely removed from the noise of everything else. It was precisely what I needed to romanticise my own life in that moment.
During dinner, the most extraordinary yacht docked right in front of me at Türkbükü. It stayed there the entire evening. I was so completely absorbed by it that I forgot to take a photo, which, if you know me at all, tells you everything about how magnificent it was. I have never seen a yacht like that.
The food was exquisite. At one point I asked a stranger to take my photo and told him it needed to look like I had walked out of a magazine. He looked at me and said "I thought you had." I love when people indulge me in exactly that way.
The only mistake of the evening was going to Scorpios afterwards. It was all hype and entirely not my vibe. I did not last long before I headed back to the hotel where they had turned down my room, left a birthday cake, and written me a handwritten card. I was not expecting any of it. They had already given me the best room available and had gone above and beyond in every direction. On the morning of my actual birthday, every single member of staff I encountered wished me a happy birthday. It was a small thing that felt enormous.
For Bodrum, I had kept my itinerary deliberately simple, a relaxing property and a rotating list of restaurants to explore. My favourite, without any competition, was Bagatelle. I was back two nights in a row. Zuma, on the other hand, was a complete disappointment. The service was appalling, the black cod, which they are supposedly known for, tasted thoroughly average, and the only thing working in its favour was the aesthetic and the sunset view. I was genuinely relieved I had made other plans for the rest of the trip.
Of everything that happened on this trip, the moment that touched me most deeply was not a restaurant or a view or a sunset. It was a stranger on a motorcycle in the South of Turkey.
Getting from Fethiye to Bodrum without flying through Istanbul first meant going by road. Bear in mind that in southern Turkey, very few people speak English. Somewhere close to my drop-off point, I realised the bus was heading in the wrong direction. I managed to get someone to stop it, and found myself on the side of the road with three suitcases, including the carpets I had picked up in Kaleici, which had made my luggage situation considerably more chaotic than it needed to be.
I needed a taxi and started flagging. A motorcycle approached and my plan was to stop him, gesture wildly, and hope for the best. He pulled over and told me to wait while he went to find a taxi. While I was standing there, an actual taxi passed, but I could not flag it down. Something in me did not want the man on the motorcycle to come back and find that I had given up on him, or that his effort had gone to waste. So I waited.
A car pulled up beside me. It was him. He had gone to park his motorcycle and come back in his car because he could not find a taxi, and he was not willing to leave me there. He drove me to my hotel, about twelve minutes away and when I asked what I owed him, he said nothing. During the drive he asked a few questions, including whether I was meeting someone. As a solo traveller you learn to never fully tell the truth, so my imaginary family was allegedly waiting for me at reception.
When he dropped me off, I hugged him and thanked him from a place I genuinely meant. I still think about that day sometimes, and I say a small prayer for him when I do.
Bodrum is somewhere I will absolutely return to, but it is not an impulse trip, it has to be planned and budgeted for intentionally. I have been doing some short trips since getting back and have somehow managed to hold down the fitness routine, which feels like a minor miracle.
Off to Boston in a couple of days, my father is turning 60 and that takes priority over everything. After that, the big trip of the year needs to start taking shape. The planning has been slow but it will get there.
I am behind on my recreational goals for the year. But I am catching up. Slowly, which, as it turns out, might just be the point.
