“The population of Antalya was 600,000 nine or ten years ago. Today it’s 3 million,” our certified tour guide Ihsan told us on a recent trip to southern Turkey. I blinked – not because I was being blinded by the sun, but because of the sheer scale of that growth. A five-fold increase in just a decade.

On our return home, I did what all good travel journalists do and Googled it – and that’s when I also discovered Antalya currently ranks sixth place globally for the highest number of international arrivals, ahead of cities such as Dubai and Paris.

I suppose it should come as no surprise. Antalya’s got the sea, the sun, the spellbinding mix of old and new — and, as we found, a pace of life that suits both wanderers and the wildly active.

Antalya’s Old Town

Our Antalya experience had begun with a

Keep reading this article on A Luxury Travel Blog.