Worst place we stayed during our two-week holiday in Turkey. What they claim on their website is…read morejust not true. Let's start with the cottages: they are nice, but ours definitely hadn't been cleaned before we arrived. The sheets had not been changed, the bathroom had not been cleaned, we didn't have any toilet paper, the empty shampoo bottles of previous visitors were still in the shower, and the bin in the bathroom hadn't been emptied. On the website however the cottage description reads like this: "Cottages feature local handicrafts in the form of pillows, cushions, bed covers, and curtains. All of the soft furnishings have been made on-site by local women...Hand-made soaps feature in the bathrooms...without traditional flat-weave Turkish kilims thrown randomly on the floor..."
We couldn't even complain about it, because after we had checked in and said we didn't want dinner from the restaurant, the guy had left for the day. But I guess even if he had been there, it would have been almost impossible to explain the problems as he didn't speak any English. Thus he also didn't explain anything about the concept of Pure Life, the area, what we could do etc. So we had no chance of enquiring about cycle, tours by donkey, courses for bread or yoghurt making, cooking courses, wine tasting - which are all advertised on the website. We couldn't even access the pool, because the entry was locked. (anyways the next morning we saw the pool had algae growing on the sides, so we probably wouldn't have wanted to use it in the end). It states on the website: "All of the activities must be pre-booked in Begis Susuzu. Some activities are seasonal.". Well that's fine, but how do you pre-book when no one is around to discuss the options with? We had a full afternoon and the whole next day which we wanted to spend in the area. Due to the lack of anything to do, we left after a bad night's sleep early the next morning.
The restaurant was advertised as follows: "Pure Life restaurant and wine cellar open their doors to offer the very best in local produce, with meals cooked in time honored ways, and served in comfortable surroundings. Of course, all food is grown locally, villagers are employed in the restaurant, and the menu offered contains many regional specialities." Well we didn't try the dinner, but breakfast consisted of tea, one sliced tomato, bread, a kind of parmesan like cheese and two types of jam. It was served outside, which surprised us, as there were lots and lots of flies at that time of the year. We just couldn't eat. On one of the forks we could see fly poo as well, which didn't really spark our appetites... It was the worst breakfast we had during our whole holiday.
The website also advertised the cottages as "Cottages are fully equipped and have everything on hand to allow maximum enjoyment of the stay. Visitors have the chance to prepare light meals in situ...". In our case it meant we had a few glasses, plates and cutlery. We didn't even expect a stove or oven, but a kettle would have been nice, as well as a food bin.
To top it all off, we didn't have water during the night, to wash, flush the toilet etc. Don't know if the guy forgot to fill our tank or something, but we only started having water again when he returned in the morning.
It actually was very loud too during the night, as the street going through the village was very busy with cars and huge trucks.
To finish with something positive, the night sky was awesome with no light pollution.
