Loll and I have not been abroad together in a decade. Palermo, Lisbon, Rome, Ibiza in our thirties, then children – and Covid – happened and the furthest we managed was Margate. Margate is lovely, but it’s not Lisbon.
So four nights on the Turkish Aegean, without children or partners, felt significant. The plan: fly to Dalaman, check in, do nothing. A total escape from responsibility; a brief escape from young children, ageing parents, partners, work.
We nearly didn’t make it on to the plane. Not because of traffic or security queues, but because we sat down, started properly talking and became so consumed by our forensic accounting of the invisible labour we each perform daily that we failed to notice we were waiting by the wrong gate. We had three minutes before ours closed. We ran, only just making it.
Shorts
Our destination was Hillside Beach Club, a resort on a private bay near Fethiye just over an hour’s drive from Dalaman Airport. The steep hills that encircle it drop through pine, olive and oleander to water an implausible shade of greenish turquoise — the kind of colour that comes from a shallow, transparent sea surrounded by forest.
