Exploring culture in Milas, Muğla
23.9.23
Aliağa beach promenade was a nice place to stay overnight.
We made breakfast and sat on the lawn before debating whether to go to Milas or not.

We see the signpost for Milas everytime we go near Muğla. Lonely Planet thinks it’s a good idea, so despite not being directly on the way home we decided to check it out.
A day or so ago a post popped up from Daily Sabah listing reasons to visit Milas, one of them was an ancient site called Stratonikeia.

Luckily we spotted the signpost for the site at the last minute and even more luckily there was no one behind us.
I absolutely loved this place. It wasn’t discovered until the 1970s.It’s still being excavated but has later Ottoman buildings too.


























We were there a long time and had drinks in the Titi cafe, in their beautiful little garden area then set off to see more of Milas.
Getting to the old historical bazaar area of Milas was a nightmare.
There were roads dug up and google maps did our heads in, they didn’t get the memo about the closed roads.




No idea how John negotiated the tiny roads. All closed roads led to the car park. The car park staff seemed bemused by the foreign visitors and asked what we wanted to see. Historical area I explained. Hmmm. Up there is a museum and along there is a mosque.
We trapsed up through the potholes to what I assumed was the Old Kervansaray which I had read about.
Wow, really shabby.

We walked a bit further and came across the actual kervansaray!




The road followed round to general shops and banks.
We found the museum, situated in a typical ottoman house. Quite a nice little place about life in Milas.

We went back on ourselves, admired the mosque, the street dog and plants and chatted with a guy who is caring for loads of tiny kittens.



So that was Milas centre. Did it warrant the drama to get into town? No.
Options now were to go towards the coast or make our way towards home.
We decided on the latter and John suggested we stop in Akyaka about 2 and a half hours away.
Akyaka was rammed, noisy bars, busy restaurants and very tricky negotiating our way around people wandering in the road and motorbikes cutting us up.
We made it to the car park, there was a motorhome in front of us and some sort of autication that went on for ages.
The staff directed us round it, we parked and John went with his 100tl in his hand to pay the guys. He came back complete with 100tl and said they wanted 250tl as we were bigger than a car. John said they could stuff it.

A quick look on park for night and John found a perfect little spot 11km away.
I was a little disappointed as fancied a wander, but realistically we’ve been to Akyaka before. It’s the same old same old we have in Fethiye resorts, but narrower and busier.
Pasta bolognese for dinner and the rest of a very non descript Şok lemon cheesecake.
We watched the last episode of ‘Generation 56k’ then a lovely film. ‘The Last Letter He Wrote’.
Would we go back to Milas? No, but glad we’ve seen it.
It was definıtely worth a detour just to visit Stratonikeia.