I smelled Antalya before I saw it - love, you might say, at first sniff. I arrived with a planeload of Irish package holidaymakers on a night flight direct from Dublin. There was a momentary hubbub as a gaggle of sleepy people was reunited with baggage and bussed to a neighbouring resort: and suddenly I had the silent, gleaming airport to myself. Five a.m. Light was beginning to streak down through the glass panels of the roof. I stepped cautiously through the automatic doors - and was, at once, enveloped in a soft, early-morning breeze perfumed with jasmine and honeysuckle.
I couldn't have had a more appropriate introduction if I'd been greeted by a red carpet, a brass band and a six-foot-high sign saying "Welcome to Antalya". Local legend says that in the second century BC, King Attalos II of Bergama sent his courtiers out to suss out a paradise on Earth, a suitable location for building a city which would make his name live forever. He must have been well pleased with the result.
The origins of "Attaleia" may be just a pretty story for the tourists, but Antalya's modern city fathers have made sterling efforts to carry on Attalos's good work, draping a chain of well-tended parks along the city's seaward side, building a marina which has been both a commercial and an aesthetic success, and - almost unbelievably in a country where restoration and preservation are still regarded as at best dubious, at worst downright insane activities - keeping Antalya's trump card, Kaleici, out of the greedy hands of developers and destroyers.
Kaleici is a minor miracle. Street upon street of traditional Turkish houses meander unhurriedly to the harbour, some in a state of advanced decrepitude, some restored as cheerful pansiyons and small hotels, all saved from the bulldozer by the precious bit of white paper which marks them as listed buildings. A week of highly unscientific comparisons led me to conclude that I was staying in one of the most beautiful: the Villa Perla, originally the home of a wealthy Greek family, and restored with immaculate attention to detail by its indefatigable female owner, Inci Hanim.
"Mrs Inci" has managed, with apparent ease, the tricky feat of running a small hotel (there are just 11 rooms) which offers all the bar and restaurant services you could wish for, yet preserves the illusion that, somehow, this is your own home. To sit with a bottle of wine among the fruit trees of the Villa Perla's walled garden, watching the hotel's six turtles lumbering purposefully around the patio, and listening to the occasional "plop" as yet another ripe orange lands in the liquid sapphire of the pool is, let me tell you, an appealing way to pass your time.
Not that passing time is a problem in Antalya. You can make an entire day of the kilometre-long stroll to the pebbly beach at Konyaalti, dawdling to admire the riotous tumble of flowering shrubs in the Gulluk and Ataturk parks along the way, pausing for a glass of tea to cool you down - or a Turkish coffee to perk you up - at one of the many outdoor cafes perched high over the marina. On the way back, you could make a detour through the city's palm-lined centre, but be warned. Antalya must have the highest concentration of seriously classy shoe-shops anywhere in the Med: and don't blame me if you end up with something stylish in a bag from Vakko - the Turkish Brown Thomas - and a considerable dent in your credit card.
So much for "normal" shopping. "Tourist" shopping in Antalya, like anywhere else in Turkey, is largely a matter of trying to escape the over-zealous attentions of leather, jewellery and carpet sellers, who'll hurl an oily "Hello; where are you from?" as you approach and a desolate "You break my heart" - or worse - at your retreating back.
Try to think well of them. Thanks to uncertainty over the trial of the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, it has been a poor season for tourism in Turkey, and many small businesses are almost certainly teetering on the brink. So don't think badly of the hardsell merchants - but, equally, never shake hands, never drink tea and if you're going to buy, buy from your neighbours. You may end up paying a bit more, but at least you'll be giving your money to somebody you like.
Eating is an altogether more relaxing business, and Antalya has its fair share of excellent restaurants. This being Turkey, the tattiest eating houses are often the tastiest, so don't rely on pretentious decor or an elaborate menu for guidance - but if the staff are keen for you to go into the kitchen to see what's cooking, and eager to offer a taste of their specialities, chances are you're on a winner. Turkish wines have been improving steadily over the past decade and are now, though universally light and fruity, extremely palatable - Kavaklidere is a good bet at the top end of the market - or you could opt for the ubiquitous local liqueur, raki, which will save you the trouble of choosing what to eat, since it anaesthetises your digestive system to the point where you can taste nothing.
Food for the mind, meanwhile, can be sampled on a day trip to one of a plethora of historical sites in the area. Of these, the Roman theatre at Aspendos is an absolute must: incredibly, the massive front of the building is intact, and looms up out of the landscape like something from another world, which of course it is. Even if you've seen amphitheatres by the dozen, you've never seen anything like this one - and, having arrived a couple of weeks too early for the annual opera and ballet festival, I could only gnash my teeth at the prospect of Fidelio or Carmen in this stupendous setting, and mark the spot in next year's diary with a vicious red "X".
There are plenty of historical bits and pieces to see in Antalya, from the 13th-century fluted Selcuk minaret to the tower which dates from the second century BC and now houses a small theatre, to the gate built by the Romans in advance of a visit to Antalya by the Emperor Hadrian. The latter, which has been presiding gracefully over a leafy corner of Ataturk Avenue for nigh on 2,000 years, is in superb condition - thanks to the energy and enthusiasm of a crew of young cleaners from the Cif (pronounced "Jif") company in Istanbul who materialised in my hotel one balmy night, it's now positively sparkling. The fastidious Hadrian, if he could see it, would doubtless be impressed.
You don't have to be 2,000 years old to benefit from a good scrubbing, of course, and whatever you do while in Antalya, don't miss out on the hamam, or Turkish bath. There are several in the city, and as my local was closed for restoration, I went to the Yeni Hamam on 1255 Sokak. There's a separate building for women - "no men! no men!" - chuckled the bikini-clad masseuse as I emerged from my cubicle in a prim swimsuit - "everything off!" I thought she just meant the clothes, but a couple of layers of skin followed swiftly afterwards as she attacked me with a Brillo pad. An hour and a half of pummelling and pounding, which included a kremli masaj - a brisk buffeting with Johnson's baby oil - cost approximately £10, and was worth every last lira.
So what else can you do in Antalya? Well, you can visit waterfalls and subterranean caves, the area's limestone topography having created a landscape full of surprises (in more ways than one - at Duden waterfall I turned and found myself face to face with a camel); you can go clubbing at the Ally Bar, which combines clued-in DJs with high-class restaurants, cleverly built into the old city walls. You can amuse kids, and scare the bejasus out of yourself, at the Aqualand water park - every form of water torture known to modern tourism, including hydrotubes, multislides and twisters.
You can spend a whole day at the Antalya museum, with its extraordinary collection of antiquities, including a superb second-century statue of a dancer in black and white marble, recovered from the Roman remains at Perge; you can go to a rock concert or a football match at the Ataturk Stadium - lucky Antalya, to have a pristine red-and-white stadium right in the centre of town - or go trekking among the mountainy pines of the Olympos and Termessos national parks. Or just lie on the miles of sandy beach at Lara and soak up the sun. Welcome to Antalya? You'll never want to leave.