My round-the-world trip has come to a screeching halt in Kaş, Turkey.
From an American point of view, it feels like I’ve been let in on a secret, perhaps by mistake. This stunning little Mediterranean town has about 50 restaurants, yet virtually no vehicle traffic to speak of. It seems like the vast majority of visitors and expats I’ve met are from Europe, and the wonderful novelty of a place like this might not be as easy to appreciate for them.
I’m an American travel writer and web developer and am now over 17 months into my second round-the-world trip (this time starting in Asia and heading west). Kaş is the closest thing to the famed ‘El Dorado’ that I’ve ever seen. If it were magically transported to California or Florida it would instantly become one of the busiest and most expensive tourist towns in the United States, justifiably so.
The storybook harbor, the mostly-pedestrianized historic town center, and the friendly and casual restaurants and cafes should all belong to a place with an endless line of cars queueing up for a giant parking structure in the center of town. But here in Kaş, the restaurants seem to have to engage in price wars just to stay afloat during the shoulder season.
Turkey is the 11th country on this trip of mine, putting me at near 60 in total, and it’s such a rare combination of east and west that after two months here I’ve decided to actually stay on indefinitely. That could mean two months or it could mean two years, and it’s because my travel experience and research have alerted me to a good thing once I see it.
Honestly, the only “east” things about most of the Turkey that tourists see are the Muslim influences and the modest prices. Otherwise, this is Europe.
On the other hand, I can see why Kaş isn’t overrun with holiday-makers for most of the year. Its location about 3 hours from a pair of second-tier airports means that no one finds this place accidentally. Those with only a week to spend are generally unwilling to roll the dice on a new place with long transfer times after a long flight. And the fact that visitors here seem to come only for longer periods keeps it from ever feeling frantic. No one, tourists or locals, ever seems to be in a hurry, and there’s a lot to be said for that.
That Kaş isn’t even visible from the main east-west coastal highway, much less directly part of the highway like many other towns, also helps make this place feel like a secret.
As a traveler and a travel writer, my greatest field of expertise is actually in prices and value of destinations all over the world. This long trip was meant to inspire and facilitate the creation of a new website called priceoftravel.com. In only the past eight months the site has been written up or referenced by many of the world’s best known newspapers and websites, so things are off to a good start.
Among other things, I track prices of hotels, attractions, transportation, food, and drinks, for over 110 cities around the world. This allows visitors to compare apples to apples so they can figure out where the value is. Kaş itself is actually too small of a market for me to add to my site, but I have covered Antalya itself, and I can reveal that if I did add Kaş that it would easily make my world’s best-value destinations list.
When I first arrived I found a room at one of the simple hotels up the hill overlooking the town center, and it ended up costing me about TL25 per night, including a traditional Turkish breakfast that was almost worth that price by itself. Certainly accommodation prices do rise as July approaches, but they are still excellent value compared to any resort town in Europe, even one only half this charming.
My original plan was to head back to Istanbul and then Sofia and Budapest in early July, but doing that would mean paying much more for places that aren’t nearly this idyllic. For an American to have even one summer in a small Mediterranean village is a privilege, and one I’m not taking lightly at all.
