Where to Stay

Dalyan is small enough that everywhere is walkable and particular enough that the street still matters. The riverfront, the back streets and the villa neighbourhoods are three different holidays in one village.

We do not let accommodation and we are not selling you a room, so what follows is what we would tell a friend, including the parts that are not flattering.

The parts of town

Distances here are measured in minutes, not kilometres. Nowhere in Dalyan is far from anywhere else in Dalyan.

Villa or hotel

The villa is why a lot of people come back: a pool nobody else is using, a kitchen, somewhere to put the shopping, and a garden to sit in once the children are asleep.

The costs are the ones that do not appear in the listing. Somebody has to drive to the shops, somebody has to cook, and a villa with no one else around in late October is quieter than people expect it to be.

Hotels here are mostly small, family run and nearer to a pension than to a resort. If what you want is a buffet, evening entertainment and a beach on site, Dalyan is the wrong town and Sarigerme or Fethiye is the right one. Better to know that now than on the second evening.

Worth checking before you book

• Air conditioning, and whether it runs all night. In July that is not a luxury.
• Which floor, and whether there is a lift, if stairs are a consideration for anybody in the party.
• How far the nearest bar is, and in which direction, in season.
• Whether the pool gets any shade at all during the day.
• Whether the place is open at all in the month you are coming. From late autumn, plenty are not.
• Whether breakfast is served by the river or in a courtyard, which sounds trivial and is not.

Noise, plainly

In high season the riverfront has music and some of it carries on. A room facing the water is worth having and worth asking about first.

The back streets solve the problem entirely at the cost of a two-minute walk, which most people conclude by the second night is not much of a cost.

The mosque calls to prayer before dawn, as it does everywhere in Turkey. If that is likely to trouble you, ask for a room away from it rather than be surprised by it.

Getting from where you sleep to the water

Every boat leaves from the quay in the centre, so the practical question is how long it takes you to be standing there at nine in the morning with a bag and a child.

From the riverfront, no time at all. From the back streets, a few minutes. From a villa out in Gulpinar, a walk while it is still cool or a short ride, and worth arranging the night before rather than on the morning itself.