The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Dream world
Bridget turns back time with a trip to the Land of Legends of Belek in Turkey
Iwant to be younger. I don’t mean just shaving a few years off to look better – I mean reverting all the way back to my childhood – like the opposite of what Tom Hanks did in Big. It’s because I’m visiting Turkey’s newest and largest theme park – the Land of Legends in Belek, just a 30-minute transfer from Antalya airport.
When we drove from our neighbouring Rixos Premium Belek Hotel up to the impressive resort, The Kingdom looked as stately as the Brandenburg Gate with statues of Trojan heroes and chariots on top of the building.
But step inside this extraordinary five-star, 400-room hotel especially designed for children and you dive headlong into a world of pure imagination – beginning in the lobby, festooned in striped candy sticks and colourful hot-air balloons. The welcoming centre display of sweets and lollipops is like a scene from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.
A quick tour of the child-filled hotel revealed why I wanted to be a little girl again. There was child-sized furniture in the dining room to sit beside parents; even a smaller entrance by the adult door; food and drinks to suit the fussiest of appetites; toys, games and funfair rides everywhere and a programme of activities like face painting from morning till midnight.
In the magical library, I coloured in a fish which was uploaded in an instant and appeared on a giant screen with the other animated characters, swimming around with my name on it!
We were shown a family room on what is nicknamed the ‘pink’ floor – popular with girls. But boy or girl, toddler to teenager couldn’t fail to be enthralled by the multi-coloured furniture and PlayStations which can be displayed on TV or on a pull-down movie theatre.
To keep mums and dads sane, the LED TVs even have dual screens so that they can enjoy adult viewing while the children watch cartoons.
Perhaps most exciting of all was the view of The Land of Legends theme parks with water slides and rollercoasters waiting to be explored.
First launched in 2016, the second phase of Turkey’s largest theme park, which is still expanding, just opened this year. The Land of Legends is a collaborative venture between Rixos World Parks & Entertainment (there are 30 hotels and resorts worldwide), UAE-based Emaar Properties (previous projects include the Burj Khalifa and the Dubai Mall) and Dragone Productions (Franco Dragone is famous for his Las Vegas theatrical shows with Celine Dion and Cirque du Soleil performances).
Being 10 again may have made me brave enough to step on board the exhilarating rides and slides – like the adrenaline-fuelled 115km/hour Hyper Coaster. Others plummet from near vertical descents, looping and spiralling all over the park.
As it was August and a sizzling Turkish summer’s day, my friend Amanda and I spent most of our time cooling down in the neighbouring Legends of Aqua Park with its pools, 43m high Typhoon Coaster and water slides.
Surf simulators, 5D cinemas, restaurants where you could eat at a table in the water – The Land of Legends theme parks had it all. In the Waterfront Kingdom, you could swim with dolphins or take an underwater safari with the tropical fish.
Yet the pièce de resistance was to come later that evening. After an excellent seafood dinner in Nemo,
It makes you feel like you’re a child again, even when – disappointingly – you’re not
where sharks and stingrays swim past diners in floor to ceiling glass aquariums, we were treated to an extraordinary free show.
This begins each evening at 10pm when the Dragone Gate and canalside Shopping Avenue springs into life with high wire performers, fantastical creatures, dancing fountains and a musical boat parade which sails past awe-inspired onlookers to the magical, multi-coloured Chateau.
Simply spell-binding, it makes you feel like you’re a child again, even when – disappointingly – you’re not.
Jet2.com have direct flights and holiday packages to Antalya until November from Edinburgh and Glasgow. Jet2holidays.com also arrange packages to the Land of Legends Kingdom Hotel and neighbouring, more adult-friendly, five-star, all-inclusive, allexclusive Rixos Premium Belek (rixos. com), where guests are given a free day theme park pass.
Edinburgh has been named the easiest UK city to travel in for the third year running in a new survey. Liverpool came second and Nottingham third in the annual ESP Group Easy Travel Index. This is thanks to accessible and affordable public bus and tram services as well as easy-to-use ticketing and travel apps. The rising cost of transport is the biggest difficulty facing UK commuters.
Mankind has left just 13% of the world’s oceans as untouched wilderness. These pristine environments are found primarily in the Arctic, Antarctic or around remote Pacific island nations. In coastal regions, there is almost no marine wilderness left at all. Despite oceans covering over 70% of our planet, humans have managed to significantly impact almost all of this vast ecosystem. This September will see the biggestever living history event to mark the Battle of Prestonpans in East Lothian (eastlothianbattles.com). Taking place over the weekend of September 15-16 from 11am – 5pm each day, there will be a series of dramatic re-enactments. Last-minute choice: Planet Cruise (planetcruise.co.uk, tel 0808 278 8504) offers a three-night cruise on board Marella Cruises’ Marella Discovery from £365 pp (all inclusive) sailing from Newcastle on September 1. The trip includes stop-offs in Amsterdam and Bruges.