Alanya is in my view mid-sized tourist destination but probably by Turkish standards it’s small. Some 120.000 people live there regularly in city itself or 250.000 with neighboring area. However, the number of tourist that will visit the city in 2017 is estimated to 9 to 10 million.
If you’re not so in the beaches you can take a trip to surrounding mountains (we took two – to Sapadere canyon and to Dimcay) where the nature is really beautiful.
There’s newly opened cable-car which brings you to castle on top of the mountain in the middle of the city.
The view is really impressive although often spoiled by the haze.
The castle is quite big with walls stretching over 7 km with some 140 towers. There’s mosque inside the castle, graveyards, many cisterns, remains of military buildings and even bizantine church as well as some modern time buildings where people actually live.
A week in Alanya went very fast and we departed back for Plovdiv on Saturday morning (September 23). We were allowed to take off customs’ seals by ourselves and we took off to pretty clear sky with much less haze than on arrival.
We were even able to see Istambul and flying at FL150 we were quite close to Ataturk LTBA airport.
Route to LBPD was similar to previous one, a bit longer and with headwind up to 25 kts.
On arrival we got visual approach for runway 30 and after landing we were again greeted by same friendly people at LBPD. As we promised to stay in Plovdiv on our way back to Croatia they brought as full tourist package with maps and guides. After quick refueling we went to city for lunch.
Plovdiv really amazed us – so full of history and so vibrant, full of young people and many tourists. Churches, mosque, Roman theater, many ancient remains and European capital of culture in 2019.
Clock tower on one of city’s hills
Fountains
In the morning we made once more quick tour around Kapana and Old City, had breakfast and went to the airport early afternoon.
Flying back home was easy. Some ice at the begining and then again to FL180 to top up everything 
The route was as same as on outbound flight with some headwind up tp 15 kts.
Some small heading adjustments were needed to avoid highest tops in eastern Croatia but we saw them early in advance at ADL. It was pretty clear that descent will be through several layers of clouds and we chose the route with least precipitation shown at ADL. At 5000 ft we were visual and soon we canceled IFR and landed to LDVA after 3 hours in the air.
New ADL coverage was very helpful during this trip – everything we saw and what what stormscope showed was pretty consistent to what was shown at ADL screen (radar images, precipitation, tops, strikes).
Thank you, Emir. Very interesting. I made a not about Plovdiv! Turkey would be on my list aswell but with the political situation at the moment (+10 Germans in jail) it’s not so much appealing to me at the moment :-)
Alexis wrote:
(+10 Germans in jail)
AFAIK these people are Turkish citizens with turkish and german passports, no real german people.
highflyer wrote:
AFAIK these people are Turkish citizens with turkish and german passports, no real german people
So if you have a German passport, you are not a German citizen?
They are all German citizens, have a German passport. Real enough for me.
One more Plovdiv panorama
AFAIK these people are Turkish citizens with turkish and german passports, no real german people.
Regardless their origin they are German citizens. BTW “Real” German people can also easily end up in Turkish jail for doing/saying wrong things against official policy.
