Kaş
"Somewhere between the second glass of raki and the sound of goat bells from the hill, I stopped planning the next day."
Kaş is the kind of town that takes a day to understand and then holds you longer than you meant to stay. It sits on a small peninsula that juts into the sea, flanked by Greek island Kastellorizo — close enough to see by day, close enough to photograph with a standard lens — and backed by mountains that drop hard enough to make the word “backdrop” feel insufficient.
The Town at Street Level
The main square is a small open space of restaurants and plane trees, but the character of Kaş lives in the lanes that run off it: Ottoman-era stone houses painted in restrained creams and whites, bougainvillea growing with the chaotic ambition that only warm climates permit, and, every so often, a Lycian stone sarcophagus sitting in someone’s garden or at the edge of a parking lot like a wayward piece of civic furniture. The Lycians, who settled this coast long before Rome took notice, left tombs everywhere, and in Kaş they’ve been absorbed into the streetscape so completely that you have to remind yourself they’re two thousand years old.
The market on Fridays brings farmers down from the villages above, and for an hour or two the square fills with dried figs, local honey, wheels of cheese, and women in salvar trousers examining squash with the serious attention it deserves.
On the Water
Kaş is one of the better dive sites on the Turkish coast — the water clarity here is remarkable, and the sea floor holds several wrecks, including a Douglas DC-3 that went down in the 1970s and now sits at around twenty-five meters, grown over with soft coral. I’m not a diver, but I spent a morning on a day boat that made slow circles through the coves west of town, stopping to snorkel in water so transparent that the bottom looked close enough to touch even when it wasn’t.
Lia swam ahead of me most of the morning, occasionally calling back to point at something — a formation of rock, a school of fish moving as one body — and I thought that this particular shade of blue, neither Mediterranean nor Caribbean but something specific to this coast, might be the thing I’d remember best.
Kastellorizo in the Distance
The tiny Greek island sits just two kilometers offshore, and you can catch a small boat across most mornings. I went for a few hours — enough to eat lunch at one of the waterfront restaurants, walk the one lane that constitutes the town, and look back at Turkey from the other side. It’s a different light from over there. Kaş looks like a painting, all white and limestone and shadow.
Food and Evenings
Dinner in Kaş involves choosing between the restaurants on the harbor, which all serve good fish, and the smaller places tucked one street back, which serve equally good fish for less money and less theater. I preferred the latter. A plate of grilled sea bass, a salad of tomatoes and cucumber dressed with nothing but oil and dried oregano, bread that arrived hot, a glass of the local wine that is better than its reputation. The simplest version of this coast.
When to go: May and June are ideal — warm enough to swim, light enough to hike, quiet enough to find a table without planning. September and early October are equally good. July and August bring crowds and prices that tip Kaş from relaxed to merely busy.