Dateline: Ali Bey Manavgat, near Antalya, Turkey

I left San Diego Tuesday midday, after. having only arrived there on Saturday morning from Houston. It was a chaotic few days: when I left Sunday for the Desert to visit my mom my house looked like a victim of a search warrant…or a clothing explosion. There was stuff everywhere, from the garage to the bedroom. I tackled the mess on Monday and tamed it, more or less, reorganized and repacked, adding and subtracting things for this trip (more tape, more strings, international currency and adapters, fewer clothes & shoes).

I rented a car and drove to LAX, and basically had no traffic! An amazing occurrence in Los Angeles. Dropping off the car and getting the bus to the airport was a cinch, and fortunately there was a cart for my stuff at the bus stop, as I had to walk quite a ways to Terminal B (Bradley, the International Terminal at LAX). I went through security and an apple was flagged (apparently the person viewing my bag was new…the other TSA agent knew it was an apple but she thought it was a liquid). Hmmm.

I had a 6:40pm flight, went to get something to eat and drink and about an hour before boarding Una Davis from the 70s team joined me. We had a nice flight to Istanbul, walked quite a ways in the new terminal to go through passport control which was really quick as was security.

When we arrived in Antalya, Carolyn Lane from my team was in the baggage claim…we got our bags and the driver I had arranged to meet us was already there. So we headed off to Ali Bey Manavgat near Side and Manavgat, Turkey, about 70 minutes from the airport and arrived near midnight.

Several people were having issues using their credit cards here because they did not have pins. The secret was to ask to have the rate charged in Turkish Lira. Once we did that, no issues. Amex though is not popular here…what is popular? Cash…Turkish Lira, Euros or $US. No transaction fees!

We were driven to our room in a golf cart and that was Tuesday/Wednesday.

Today, Thursday was a gorgeous day…cool (mid-60s), but the sky was a brilliant blue, the winds were there (the resort is right on the Mediterranean Sea), but fairly light and it was a perfect day for tennis. We met at 11am, hit for a couple of hours (then straightened out Carolyn Lane’s and Susan’s payment situation from the night before), had lunch (the food here is excellent, fresh, plentiful and varied, everything from French Fries to grilled fish to salad to strawberries, from Turkish food to Asian food to pomegranates. See below for a glimpse of half the salad offerings, with a Canadian player. I also joined the gym here for shoulder exercises, stretching etc.

We hit a bit after lunch, then Carolyn, Una and I had a massage (separate rooms!) off site…very reasonable and Carolyn & Una were super happy with their therapists.

Below are a few photos from practice and of the lovely heated pool by the restaurant. I corrupted Carolyn Lane and Una with a European Coke Zero (so much better than the USA version, and this comes from someone who is still irked at Coca Cola for killing off Tab soda during the pandemic!).

By the way, I activated my Turkish data sim which start at around $5 for 1gb of data and around $18 for 10 gb for 30 days…very easy and you can add data as you wish. This is a data only plan, I used Airolo. But there are many others.

Tomorrow we are practicing at 8:15. We were going to start later, but it looks likely to start raining between 11-1 till dark. These courts do absorb a remarkable amount of rain and remain playable, but just in case we decided to start early.