Fethiye
You can be here in December for about €586, 4 days, direct.
Why now
Good time in December: 18°C days, sea 21°C.
The Lycian Way and the gorge walks are best in spring and autumn, when the paragliders still fly and the lagoon has room to swim; midsummer is hot and the Ölüdeniz beach is shoulder to shoulder. Boat trips and Butterfly Valley run only in season, so the quiet months also mean fewer options.
Best months here: September, October, November. December is not one of them — the label above measures the month against a fixed bar, not against the rest of the year here. Daytime highs, sea temperature and rainy days from three years of Open-Meteo reanalysis; a rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, which is the WMO threshold and not the same as "it drizzled".
The place
Dalaman is the airport; Fethiye is the reason to fly there. A harbour town with a fish market and Lycian tombs cut into the cliff above it, ringed by pine coast, a famous lagoon and a long-distance footpath. It suits people who want the sea plus something to walk to, and who can ignore the package strip at Hisarönü.
What you can do
- 01Swim the Ölüdeniz lagoon early, before the day boats, then watch the paragliders land on the beach at Belcekız.
- 02Buy fish at the Fethiye market and have one of the surrounding restaurants cook it with a mezze table.
- 03Walk over the hill from Ölüdeniz to Kayaköy, the abandoned Greek town of Levissi, and back by dolmuş.
- 04Climb to the rock tomb of Amyntas above Fethiye for the sunset over the bay.
- 05Wade the Saklıkent Gorge in cold knee-deep water, then see the Lycian city of Tlos on the ridge above.
Where to stay · neighbourhoods
Base yourself in Fethiye town or Çalış for a first visit and reach the lagoon by dolmuş; sleep at Ölüdeniz only if the beach is the whole point. Hisarönü and Ovacık are British package resorts on the hill with nothing to walk to.
Unusual things
- ◦Gemiler Island, a Byzantine pilgrimage site with ruined churches and a covered processional way, reached by boat from the Kayaköy coast.
- ◦Pınara, a Lycian city in the hills near Minare with hundreds of tombs cut into a cliff face and few visitors.
- ◦Kabak Bay beyond Faralya, a cove of bungalow camps at the bottom of a steep path off the Lycian Way.
Day trips
Flight options
Routes come from OpenFlights (historical) and a 2026 route reference compiled from public timetables. Durations are the published schedule where we have it, otherwise a block-time model fitted on measured nonstop flights. Verify schedules with the airline before booking.
Entry requirements · IT passport
Türkiye: visa-free up to 90 days in 180 for most EU passports.
Source: passport-index-data, March 2026 (coarse indicator), covering 258 of our 268 destinations for each of 199 passports. Always confirm with the destination's official site.
Airports
Distances are centre to airport derived · nonstop counts are our route reference for 2026, not every flight that exists.
Local transport
- Airport to city
- Shuttle, 60 min, ~€6; car useful
- Car needed?
- Recommended for most of what is worth seeing
- Getting around
- Airport shuttles reach Fethiye in about an hour. Dolmuş minibuses run every few minutes between Fethiye, Ölüdeniz and Çalış in season; a car makes the Lycian sites and the gorge easy, and the coast road to Kaş is slow but good.
- Clock
- 2 hours ahead of Munich (Europe/Istanbul) derived
- Daylight
- 9.7 hours of daylight in December · sunrise 08:08, sunset 17:49 derived
- Currency
- TRY
Alternatives at a similar price
Whole trip per person for 4 days from Munich in December, then the flight time; estimates, like the total above.
Hurghada
Cairo
Tenerife
Sharm El Sheikh
Luxor
Casablanca