Seasonal Food in Turkey - Citrus Fruit

Many people come out to Fethiye at this time of year with the idea of enjoying a change of scenery while seeing in the New Year. As tends to be the norm during these festive periods, flights from all over the world are swapped, changed and cancelled and destination airports are altered. During the early hours of 28th December, our friends landed at Bodrum Milas Airport. Yes, they should have landed at Dalaman Airport but I'm starting to feel like Christmas wouldn't be Christmas if we didn't have to set off on a jaunt along the southern coast of Turkey to pick friends up.



I love to drive and make longer journeys more interesting by stopping off here and there. If there's no rush, what's the point of hurtling along the road, straight to your destination? There are many little places along that road waiting to be explored. Some are going to be better than others, but how do we know if we don't see for ourselves? We set off from Fethiye during mid-morning on the 27th December and paid a visit to Marmaris and Akyaka en route to Bodrum. We also made one other little stop...

  Köyceğiz citrus fruit stalls

Köyceğiz is a large village west of Dalaman airport and it is a major production area for citrus fruits. Orange and lemon groves line the road on either side, vivid green leaves and branches straining under the weight of juicy oranges. Trailers sit in lay-bys, overflowing with fruit waiting to be towed to market. And every few metres, stalls like this sell the juiciest, tastiest citrus fruits. Of course, this could be purely psychological but the tangerines seem to taste so much sweeter from these stalls. There's something really enjoyable about pulling up by the side of the road and jumping out for the car to buy a couple of kilos of tangerines for the journey - or are we just easily pleased?

Seasonal citrus fruit in Turkey

I don't know how many tangerines we got through before we reached our first stop of Marmaris. Too many - but we did manage to save some to share with our friends on the way back to Fethiye.