Have Baby Will Travel’s trip reports for Turkey are organized alphabetically by city or region within the country. Simply scroll down to read them all. Each trip report has been provided to Have Baby Will Travel in hopes of giving other parents a clearer picture of what to expect when traveling to Turkey with a baby or toddler.
(2 reports)
ANTALYA: DELPHIN PALACE HOTEL
October 2007
Maurice & Family
I spent a week with my “extended family”, meaning my mother, wife, daughters (2 years and 4 months) and 11-year-old son. Not an easy “team”. Anyhow, the time of a year seemed perfect, as the temperature was just almost too hot, and the evenings were not cold yet.
The family room I managed to get was decent, with 2 bathrooms and one balcony. However, the standard family room has just one bathroom. The room itself is not the most spacious in the world, but definitely not the smallest either. The beds are a little strange, old fashioned, but large enough for two adults and an infant. The baby bed was very comfortable for the 2-year-old.
TVs in the room are 25″ old tubes, but plenty of different language channels. But you don’t watch much TV on an all-inclusive vacation anyway, right? Housekeeping was great, fast, minibar always full. The lobby’s wifi Internet was available at least in the second floor rooms, (maybe also in higher rooms, did not test).
The food was wonderful, one day (decent) sushi, last night marvelous carpaccio, and the selection extremely good, from different soups to greyfish, grilled lamb, steaks and so on. VERY GOOD FOOD! Don’t bother to reserve a la carte — nothing special really, the buffet is better choice.
But the best of best: SERVICE. I have no idea how the owner of the hotel manages to get all the staff do things fast, well, and in top of that in friendly manner. It seems that all the workers get a tip for each thing they do, however, tipping was not very common there. They are really friendly. My daughters were so popular among staff so we could hardly move around 🙂
There are many lovely bungalows around, by the pools, in the garden, in beach — they are useful especially for families with kids, who need to take a nap (or, alternatively if you had too many drinks last night and need to sleep in open air).
I liked especially the “Carrotboy”, who hung around in the territory, serving fresh carrot, apples and watermelon. Drinks were good and selection wide. A tip: you can get freshly squeezed fruit juices in the relax pool bar.
Kids’ zone was nice, kids’ pool great — however, the water in the kids’ pool could be heated. The waterslides were just great fun even for me, but our boy just loved it!
The rooms are supposed to be free by noon, but we got ours until 4 pm (no charge). As the hotel is close to airport, the transfer is just 20 minutes or so. So, all in all — a great place, a good choice for families! Most probably I will go back there.
KUSADASI: FANTASIA HOTEL
September 2006
Tracy & Family (baby 13mos.)
Stayed at Fantasia from September 24 – October 9 and what a pleasurable holiday. I went with my husband, 4 children aged 17,15,11 & 13months plus my mum and dad aged 55 & 65.
The hotel is very impressive when you first arrive and goes on impressing the whole time.
Food fantastic – i am a very fussy eater but even I enjoyed the food – some nights there wasn’t much that i would eat BUT there was always something!!! There are very few times during the day when there isn’t something to eat on offer, whether it be breakfast, pizza by the pool, lunch in the restaurant or allegro overlooking the pool who then go on to serve jacket potatoes, pancakes, ice cream and then afternoon tea and cakes, then dinner, then unfortunately nothing until 11.30pm midnight snacks!!!! Drinks are plentiful and proper Coke etc although the cocktails did all taste the same but that sometimes depended on who made them.
The rooms were very spacious and the beds comfortable, but be warned no double beds – apparently you have to request a French bed to get a double? The furniture is dated but is clean and at the end of the day you don’t really spend that much time in the room anyway – one thing I will say is that they don’t have a kettle in the rooms for all you tea/coffee drinkers so you have to go down to the bar to get a hot drink. Air con not very good either but we went end of Sept beg Oct so not too much of a problem.
Staff were lovely and the animation team were great – didn’t stop all day playing different games with the adults then doing the entertainment in the evening – a bit cheesy – think Butlins – but hey we were on hols with the kids and it suited them just fine and if you take it how its meant to be taken then it’s quite funny actually – say hi to Oscar and Pietro. The mini kids club is great for the younger ones and even my 11 year old enjoyed most of what they did.
Pools were lovely – could be a bit cold but who wants a bath in the hot weather!! Plenty of clean towels at poolside.
Had pool table, billiards table, couple of table tennis tables etc so plenty to do bars very comfortable only problem is once we’d settled down onto a chair/sofa we didn’t want to get up.
They fell in love with the kids especially the baby so that’s something you have to adjust to as they do give them a lot of attention and kept ‘kidnapping’ my son to show him off to others!!!!
Very mixed people – different nationalities as well as different age groups – saga trips also.
Apparently the Dolmus (mini bus) stops opposite hotel or if like us you didn’t want to try your luck with a baby and pushchair the taxis are at the end of the hotel drive – but if you ask at reception they will phone down for you – the taxis hold 6 passengers and are very reasonably priced – we paid roughly 20 Turkish lira to get into Kusadasi.
There are a couple of bars just outside of the hotel and if you walk down further there is an indoor market which had a few bargains so don’t forget to have a look.
Very clean and clean linen every day not even any bugs although if you watch the entertainment outside at night look out for the roaches running around the patio!!!!!! Also in the umbrellas by the pool!!!!
All in all a great holiday and even my elder daughter wants to go back – which has never been known before!!!!!!!! If you are going then i hope you have as good a time as we all did.
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