Another trip to Turkey

Note: This post is my entry for the Travelizer competition for a chance to win an £800 break to a European city. Full details of the competition, and how you can enter yourself, can be found at http://www.travelizer.co.uk/ - the competition closes on November 4th

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Long term readers of  this blog may recall that last year I was lucky enough to win a prize in  the Sunday Times's weekly "Where Was I?" competition. The holiday prize that week was a trip to the beautiful hotel Bordubet, and you can read about the prize trip here . I finished that post with the phrase "I'll be back" and, true to my word, I returned there  in September this year.

Last year I went with my friend Rosemary, but I knew my husband would  love the hotel, so this  year he and I went together. And we enjoyed it so much  that we have already booked to go again next year!

Bordubet (the name comes from the German, not Turkish, for "bird bed" and almost every building has a beautiful bird house on the wall) is a beautiful hotel in a very isolated position on the Bozburun Peninsula of  Turkey. There are no shops and bars nearby, no nightlife, no entertainment, just relaxing, beautiful gardens  and a small "beach club" accessed by boat or a path winding along the hillside.

Even when the hotel is full, there are only 72 guests, and with 40 staff to look after you, the standard  of service is extremely high but never obtrusive. We enjoyed lazy days and relaxing evenings, enjoying the almost-empty pool or taking the boat out to the beach club to swim in the sea. Delicious buffet style meals were served each evening among the sounds of crickets, frogs and the occasional duck-fight. The river winds through the grounds  beside the restaurant, and fish swim up to the tables to beg for food.

As well as  glorious lush gardens  in the main part of the hotel, the kitchen garden is also open to visitors, who are free to roam around and even pick fruit and veg and take them to the kitchen to be cooked for them.  Most of you know that my husband is a keen vegetable grower and loves to blog about food and gardening, so as you can imagine he was in his element! This bed of pumpkins was next to the hotel's tennis  and basketball courts, so we nicknamed it the "squash court"

We  came home feeling healthier and more relaxed than we had done for a very long time, and look forward to repeating the experience next year.

I must end with one more photograph - being the editor of Grape Vine,  I couldn't leave the hotel without a photo of.... a grape vine!