Karen Phillips

Author – Photographer – Traveller
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The sea turtles return to Kusadasi

We used to have a home on an island in the Caribbean and here, between May and October, the great sea turtles would come ashore to nest. Both loggerhead and green turtles, many over 5 foot long, would haul themselves ashore, painfully slowly make their…
  • The sea turtles return to Kusadasi

Tripadvisor rates us as Excellent

Flipkey, the vacation arm of Tripadvisor, sent me an email the other day, we’ve been rated as “Excellent” by virtue of our guest reviews and we get a little badge to prove it. Find Kusadasi Villas on FlipKey It is hard to stand out in…
  • Tripadvisor rates us as Excellent

Yes, it’s hot!

The Heat was a long time coming this year, not the sun, that’s always around, but The Heat, that deserving of capitalisation, smothering, iron hot, oven blast, knife edged heat that settles over Turkey in the Summer. Normally it arrives in June, this year it…
  • Yes, it’s hot!

Missing Time

I appear to have lost a week again. This happens fairly regularly here. Each day is full and feels long and leisurely but then you turn round and several weeks more than you thought have slid past. To be fair I am in the middle…
  • Missing Time

Up hill and down dale

A cold front from the Black Sea is sweeping down over Turkey, the temperature has dropped and the wind from the North is cool and strong, swirling weirdly around the valley, gusting about the houses, sending the pine trees into their surf sound sway and…
  • Up hill and down dale

Coping with the cherry glut.

I am up to my eyeballs in cherries. Every night one or another of the neighbours knocks on the door and another couple of kilos arrive. Stoning cherries isn’t my favourite job; if they are just about ripe I can slit them with a knife…
  • Coping with the cherry glut.

Small flitting things….

When I first came here, that first summer, I saw a hummingbird in the garden. Being quite used to hummingbirds around the place I was happy to see it and scuttled off to find out which particular hummingbird it was. Having Googled European Hummingbirds I…
  • Small flitting things….

A Day in the Cherry Orchards

We have a lovely guy staying with us at the moment; he really wants to experience village life and so yesterday he volunteered to go cherry picking with our farmer friend Ahmet. He returned last night from a day in the orchards with a good…
  • A Day in the Cherry Orchards

This is not just olive oil….etc

Imagine some languorous background music, say “At the River” by Groove Armada, something smoky and sensuous. Now listen to the voice over, it’s sultry and smouldering, it’s probably Dirvla Kirwan, she sounds like the kind of girl who will magic up sex on a plate…
  • This is not just olive oil….etc

Rose Petal Jam

I bought some rose jam from the Farmers Market in the village the other weekend and it went down a storm with our guests. They basically bought all they could find to take back to Canada with them and, as is usual here, once something…
  • Rose Petal Jam

Pimp my Dolmus

Turkey is a medium crazy country, it doesn’t have health and safety mini Hitlers presiding over every day life but it has its fair share of the weird, wacky and downright bonkers. A lot of this madness is expressed in the idiosyncratic ways the dolmus…
  • Pimp my Dolmus

This Week in Kirazli – 29th May 2011

It’s been a great week – we’ve had really lovely guests staying (we are so lucky in the guests we have come to stay), all the animals have been lavished with more attention than frankly they deserve, the weather has been great apart from the…
  • This Week in Kirazli – 29th May 2011

Eek Public Transport!

I am a total stranger to public transport, other than planes I don’t do public transport. There are reasons for this, and it is not just that I am snotty beyond belief! I come from deepest, darkest Pembrokeshire. We don’t have public transport in Pembrokeshire…
  • Eek Public Transport!

Adaland Review

Can I say, right from the offset, that I feel really uncomfortable about a business that uses captive dolphins to make money which is something Adaland does. This isn’t a reflection of the type of care the dolphins receive it’s just I don’t like the…
  • Adaland Review

This week in Kirazli – 18th May 2011

I got up early this morning and cut back the spring flowering plants that are just about past their best, giving the newly planted peppers and tomatoes room to grow. This is the first year I have planted anything more edible than a herb but…
  • This week in Kirazli – 18th May 2011
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