The "ultra All-inclusive" Barut Lara Resort Hotel

This week I celebrated Gabi's birthday by spending a  few days with her and her beau, Murat, at the Barut Lara Resort Spa and Suites.  The idea behind this hotel visit was to enjoy eating, dancing and, most importantly, bathing in a heated room. There were also supposed to be "activities" to keep us busy.  There was a yoga class available, but the timing was off; it was scheduled for right after lunch (not a good time to do yoga). And since the median age of the hotel guests was somewhere between seventy and death, I doubted the yoga would be very challenging.
The other activity consisted of shooting.  It alternated between a rifle, darts and bows and arrows.  Gabi and Murat partook of this activity, but I passed.

The Barut Lara Hotel 

I did make use of the indoor/outdoor pool.  It was a bit chilly for an outdoor swim, but with the heated water and the sun it was okay for a while.  Since you could swim from the outdoors to the indoors, you didn't freeze when you got out of the pool.  The indoor pool area was very warm.
The best thing about the hotel was the room.  I don't usually get excited about hotel rooms, but this was really just what I wanted.  The room was very spacious, with a daybed and desk in the sitting area.  The bed had a thick pillow-top mattress, which is something special in Turkey.  The bathroom had a great shower and bath, and the large balcony had a sea view and the afternoon sun.  This was a nice change for me because the balcony in my apartment gets the morning sun.  I was able to watch the sunset:

Sunset from my balcony at Barut Lara

That was the good news.  And now for the rest:  The first thing that annoyed me was that there was no free internet.  Call me crazy, but I think an  "ultra all-inclusive" ought to, you know, include everything.  Maybe I spend too much time on line, but I think nowadays everyone depends on internet to keep in touch with friends, family and the office while traveling.
The evening entertainment consisted of a  Samba dance group from Brazil.  While the men were impressively acrobatic, the g-string-clad women were only called upon to face upstage and shake their almost naked behinds.
But the real problem with this hotel was that the food was largely inedible. I can't complain about it being all buffet, although that's not my idea of fine dining, because apparently all the "luxury all-inclusive resorts" here do that.  I also can't fault the quantity (so I can't use the old Borscht belt joke), but I can fault the quality.  I'm not being picky here; I'm talking about meat that smelled rotten and a whole fish that was cooked without having been cleaned.  The food that was edible was flavorless.  The pastries looked beautiful, but some were clearly days old and hard as rocks.  The coffee I ordered at lunch was simply not coffee.  It tasted like some kind of grain. Chicory, maybe?  The wine was another example of the "all-inclusive" nonsense.  You could buy a decent bottle of wine at a ridiculous premium; the wine that was included was absolute swill.

The path to the beach at the Barut Lara Hotel.

And one more thing:  I had to check out a few hours before my ride came, so I checked my luggage.  When I came back to pick it up it was nowhere to be found.  They kept directing me to the same room and I kept telling them it wasn't there.  There was a van in the driveway loaded up with several valises, and sure enough my bag was at the bottom of the pile.  If I'd been five minutes late my suitcase would have been at the airport with a group flying to Germany.
So, the facility itself is nice, but until management changes the Lara Barut Hotel is best avoided.