Bodrum, Mugla TURKEY

Bodrum was our first Turkey’s city we reached before we explore other cities in Turkey. Why we choose to come here first? This is because we are coming from Santorini, Greece. The easiest and practical way is take overnight ferry from Santorini to Kos Island, Greece then take Ferryboat to Bodrum, Turkey. Overnight ferry via Blue Star Ferry will take you about 5 hours journey, while ferryboat from Kos Island to Bodrum is about 1 hour.

Note: If you want to fly from Santorini to Turkey, you can fly with Aegean Air. Aegean Air offer lowest fares as €57 one-way from Santorini to Izmir or Santorini to Istanbul, if you book early about 6 months before your departure date or book during off season. Unfortunately, there’s no direct flight, all flights will transit in Athens Airport.

📌Transportation Cost:-

Overnight Blue Star Ferry start from €20 p.p. Sometime they have offer promotion fare time to time. Checkout their website for special promotion here; Blue Star Ferry Deals. In my case, we choose to stay in a cabin room since we traveled with toddler. Cheapest Cabin fares per person was €53 (4-berth cabin).

Route Santorini to Kos run by Hellenic Seaways vessel. If you are wondering where is the starting point? Here’s the complete route, PIRAEUS – SANTORINI – KOS – RHODES, So don’t missed your arrival port. By the way, the depature port for Santorini is Athinios Port, about 25 min by car from Fira (Thira)/Imerovigli.

Ferryboat from Kos to Bodrum start from €15 p.p. (please buy direct from Kos Ferry port counter. Other than this place, you will be charged at €19). The official ticket counter is nearby the departure gate where you must go through here to cross the border.

📌 Bodrum city from my point of view.

It’s a laid back city, the local people here are friendly and nice. The harbour view is beautiful and calm. For your info the city features twin bays with views of Bodrum Castle. You will see many yacht parked at the harbour, excellent small restaurants along the seaside. All these makes the scenic view of Bodrum coastal city. I would say Bodrum city has a well-preserved Greek atmosphere with a Turkish flavor.

In our plan, we write down “visit Bodrum Castle”, but unfortunately, the castle was under renovation, So we checked out from outside.

📌What do we do in Bodrum City?

– Once arrived at the terminal, we look for place for lunch! we had McDonald instead. After that, we strolled walk at Pedestrian Old Town Area Shopping. This place very similar with our Petaling Street, KL.

– Night time, we had dinner at Mado Cafe, which is one of the famous cafe & restaurant chain in Turkey. “MADO is a Turkish ice cream brand and has over 365 branches working as cafes and restaurants all over the world” -wikipedia. Bodrum Mado Cafe located at the seaside. You can enjoy the view while having your meal or snacks. Mado has great menu selections! and its a lot until we don’t know how to choose from, but the food is really good 👍🏻👍🏻. The only negative side of this Mado cafe in Bodrum was the service is very slow.

– On the next morning, we spent our time having buffet breakfast served by the hotel. They had great selection of turkish food. Thinking of relaxing at the beach side, but the wind was too strong and chill.

– Visit Bodrum Market. This was the best experiance so far in Bodrum, where you can observe local people selling local products. You will see vegetables, fruits and other things were nicely arranged. We bought grapes at very cheap price!. Fyi, this market located just above the Bus Terminal.

– Lastly, we shopped some snacks & baby products at MMM Migros. This supermarket is cheap and easy to find all over Turkey. The price range just like in Malaysia.

There are plenty of places you can visit in Bodrum. You can google it and plan. If you have extra days, you can go furthest part of Bodrum.

During our days in Bodrum, we only use metered taxi as our main transportation. The fares approximately about TRY15-20 (MYR10-15) for about 2km driving distance.

We stayed at Akkan Beach Hotel for 1 night, booked from booking.com at TRY165 (RM116) for standard room. The owner of this hotel very nice and friendly. He even upgraded us to Deluxe Room with seaview!, initially he let us choose between Family room and Deluxe Seaview Room. Since only 3 of us, we choose to stay Deluxe Seaview Room. We were so lucky! ❤️