# Guys Trip Ideas In Antalya *mantripping.com — Updated May 4, 2026* Antalya is the Mediterranean half of the Turkey coast - 2,000-year-old Roman ruins inside a walkable old town, the largest concentration of championship golf in the country at the Belek resort cluster a half-hour east, and a 100-mile all-inclusive resort belt that runs from Lara out through Side and Alanya. This is the Turkish Riviera, and it's the version of the Turkey guys trip that delivers golf, beaches, and Roman history without the gulet logistics or the trekking commitment. If your crew has been quoting golf packages in the Algarve, Costa del Sol, or Marbella, the Antalya version of the same trip runs at roughly half the cost. ## Why Antalya Works for a Guys Trip Antalya is built around Kaleiçi, the walled Roman-and-Ottoman old town that sits on a rocky outcrop above the Mediterranean. This is where the city actually started - Hadrian's Gate (built AD 130 to commemorate the Roman emperor's visit), the harbor, the 13th-century Yivli Minare, the cobbled streets that wind down to the cliff edge. Most first-timers base in Kaleiçi for the city stop and then move out to the resort belt for the rest of the trip. The resort belt itself splits across four very different zones. Lara (15-20 minutes east of the airport) is the closest concentration of big all-inclusive properties - quick transfers, themed-architecture mega-resorts, easy beach access. Belek (40 minutes east) is the luxury all-inclusive and golf hub. Side (50 minutes east) wraps a 20-kilometer beach around the ancient Greek-Roman city of Side - resorts plus a walkable old town with ruins. Alanya (2 hours east) is the budget end of the belt with the longest beaches and the loudest nightlife. Pick the zone that matches the trip's energy. The "I didn't know that" fact: Belek is one of the most concentrated golf destinations in Europe, with more than 16 championship courses built into a roughly 25-square-kilometer pine-forest belt - almost all developed in the last 25 years and several hosting DP World Tour (European Tour) events. Regnum Carya Golf Club hosted the Turkish Airlines Open most recently in 2025 (its third time staging the tournament); the 2026 edition moves to the National Golf Club in Belek, and the Montgomerie Maxx Royal has hosted in earlier years. Most courses sit inside or beside a 5-star all-inclusive resort, which means a guys golf trip can roll out of the room, eat at the property, play the round, and never touch a rental car. **Best time to visit:** April through early June and September through October are the windows for the city-and-golf side of the trip. Shoulder seasons keep the temperature in the 70s-80s, the pine-belt golf courses don't bake in afternoon heat, and the Roman ruins are walkable without sweating through your shirt. July and August work for guys who plan to live at the resort pool with occasional ducking into the air-conditioned old town - but expect 95-100°F afternoons. Winter (December-March) drops the prices dramatically and the weather still holds in the 50s-60s; the bigger Belek courses run dual seasonal rates for guys who don't mind a sweater on the back nine. **Getting There & Around:** Antalya Airport (AYT) is the gateway - direct seasonal flights from London, Berlin, Manchester, and most major European hubs land here in summer; from the U.S., Turkish Airlines connects via Istanbul on a one-hour domestic hop. AYT to Lara: 15-20 minutes. AYT to Belek: 40 minutes. AYT to Side: 50 minutes. AYT to Alanya: 2+ hours. Hotel transfers are typically included with all-inclusive bookings. Once you're at the resort, you don't need a car - the property runs everything you need. For day trips into Kaleiçi, Aspendos, or Köprülü Canyon, hotel concierge tour bookings are the easiest play. ## What Kind of Trip Is This? **The Belek Golf Trip:** This is the headline Antalya guys trip. 16+ championship courses inside a 25-square-kilometer cluster, almost all attached to 5-star all-inclusive resorts, and most operating year-round. Carya Golf Club is the standalone heathland-style course on undulating sand hills, with floodlit night golf available on selected days. Montgomerie Maxx Royal, Cornelia Diamond (with a Sir Nick Faldo signature course on site), Regnum Carya (Turkish Airlines Open 2025 host and 2026 venue at the adjacent National Golf Club), and Gloria Golf Club round out the headline options. A 4-night, 3-round package at a Belek 5-star runs $1,200 to $2,500 per person depending on resort tier and season - flights, transfers, all-inclusive food and drink, and green fees included. Compare against the Algarve or Marbella for the same trip and the Belek golf number wins the price test consistently. **The Turkish Riviera All-Inclusive Trip:** For guys who don't want to plan, Antalya's resort belt is the Mediterranean's deepest concentration of all-inclusive properties. Lara is the closest and most convenient (15-20 minutes from AYT, themed-architecture mega-resorts, easy beach access). Belek delivers the luxury tier (golf-resort sophistication, ultra-all-inclusive packages with à la carte restaurants, top-end brands like Maxx Royal and Regnum Carya). Side delivers the resort plus walkable old town combo (20km beach, ancient Greek-Roman ruins inside the resort zone). Alanya delivers the value tier with the longest beaches and the loudest nightlife. Whichever zone fits, the Turkish Riviera all-inclusive math works out lower per-day than the Spanish or Portuguese equivalents, and the food quality runs higher than the Caribbean equivalents. **The Roman Ruins & Old Town Trip:** Antalya was settled long before the Roman Empire arrived, but the Romans left the deepest physical mark. Hadrian's Gate (AD 130) still anchors the entrance to Kaleiçi. Aspendos, an hour east, has one of the most completely preserved Roman amphitheaters in the world - the full stage facade intact, all 41 rows of seats still in place, and acoustic resolution good enough to host the annual Aspendos Opera Festival every summer. Perge, 20 minutes east of the city, has the Roman stadium, the agora, and the Hellenistic city gates. Side itself is a Roman seaport built on a peninsula, with the Temple of Apollo at the tip and the city gates and theater preserved inside the modern beach town. For guys who want substance with their beach time, the Antalya region delivers more accessible Roman ruins per square mile than anywhere outside Italy. ## Best Antalya Guys Trip Ideas The Antalya trip works best when the days split between resort pool/beach time, one big golf round, one Roman ruins day, and one inland adventure. Here is how to put it together. ### Belek Golf Day: Carya and a Long Lunch Tee off at Carya Golf Club in the morning - 18 holes on the heathland-style course that anchors many Belek itineraries, with the pine forest backing every fairway and a bunker setup that punishes the wrong club. Round runs 4.5 hours with cart. Lunch at the clubhouse, which serves serious Turkish meze plus Western standards. Afternoon options: 9 more holes on the floodlit course as the sun drops (the floodlit night-golf round is a Carya signature and one of the few of its kind in Europe), a hammam back at the resort, or pool time before a long all-inclusive dinner. This is the day the whole trip is built around for the golf-trip crew. ### Köprülü Canyon Rafting Day A full-day rafting trip at Köprülü Canyon - the 366-square-kilometer national park 90 kilometers northeast of Antalya, with class II-III rapids on the Köprüçay River that work for any experience level. Hotel pickup at 8 AM, hour-and-a-half drive into the canyon, two hours on the water, lunch at one of the riverside trout restaurants (built directly over the cold mountain river), return by late afternoon. Most operators offer the rafting plus zipline plus buggy safari combo for crews that want to stack the adrenaline. The contrast between the all-inclusive resort beach and the cold canyon water is the right midweek change-up - and the trout lunch is a meal most guys remember as the food highlight of the trip. ### Aspendos and Perge Roman Ruins Day Drive 45 minutes east to Aspendos - a Roman amphitheater built around 155 AD that still has its full stage facade, all 41 rows of seats, and acoustic resolution good enough to host the annual Aspendos Opera Festival. Two hours at the site. Drive 25 minutes back toward Antalya for Perge - a Roman city with a 12,000-seat stadium, a colonnaded street, the agora, the Hellenistic gates, and Roman baths laid out across a 1-square-mile site. Lunch at one of the rural roadside restaurants. End at the Antalya Archaeological Museum back in the city - the Hall of the Gods sculpture collection from Perge is the museum's headliner. This is the day the trip pays off for any history nerd in the crew. ### Kaleiçi Old Town Wander and Harbor Dinner Spend a half-day walking Antalya's old town - Hadrian's Gate, the Yivli Minare (the city's 13th-century carved Seljuk minaret, on the UNESCO Tentative List), Hıdırlık Tower at the cliff edge, the Suna and İnan Kıraç Kaleiçi Museum in a restored Ottoman house. Lunch at a meyhane in the old-town courtyards. Dinner down at the harbor at one of the seafood spots that runs cliffside tables overlooking the Mediterranean - sunset there is one of the best evening views on the Turkish coast. Walk back up through the old town for cocktails at one of the rooftop bars. The slow, romantic version of an Antalya day - and the one that crews who think the city is "just resorts" usually end up most surprised by. ### Side or Alanya Day Trip from Belek If the trip is anchored in Belek, a half-day east hits Side (50 minutes from Belek, ancient harbor city with the Temple of Apollo at the tip of the peninsula, walkable ruins, and beach restaurants on the south coast). A full day east reaches Alanya (1.5 hours from Belek, with Alanya Castle on the hilltop, the Red Tower at the harbor, Cleopatra Beach, and the longest beach strip on the coast). Alanya is also where the trip's nightlife runs hardest if Belek's resort scene gets too quiet for the crew. This is the day for guys who want to see what the rest of the Turkish Riviera looks like without committing to a multi-base trip. ## More Ideas Worth Exploring - **Aspendos Roman Theater** - 155 AD amphitheater with the full stage facade intact and acoustics still in use for summer opera concerts; one of the best-preserved Roman theaters in the eastern Mediterranean. - **Antalya Archaeological Museum** - The Hall of the Gods sculpture collection from Perge is the museum's headliner and one of the best Greco-Roman collections in Turkey. - **Düden Waterfalls** - Both the Upper Düden Falls (in a wooded park 10km north of the city) and the Lower Düden Falls (the cliff-edge falls dropping straight into the Mediterranean) are worth a half-day drive. - **Antalya Cable Car (Tünektepe)** - Gondola up to the 605-meter summit overlooking the city, the Mediterranean, and the Beydağları mountains; sunset ride is the move. - **Olympos Beach and Chimaera flames** - A 90-minute drive west along the Lycian coast to ancient Olympos beach, with the Chimaera natural gas flames burning in the hillside above (the inspiration for the mythical Chimera); pair with an overnight at one of the Olympos tree-house lodges for a different version of the Turkey trip. - **Kemer Marina and beaches** - 45 minutes west of Antalya, a quieter Mediterranean coast village with a small marina and beaches that don't see the resort-belt crowds. - **Termessos Ancient City** - Inland mountain ruins above the city, built into the Beydağları slopes; one of the few cities Alexander the Great failed to conquer, and the most dramatically situated Pisidian site in the region. ## Explore More Destinations - **[Fethiye](https://www.mantripping.com/international/middle-east/turkey/fethiye.html)** - 3 hours west, the Lycian launching point. Paragliding off Babadağ Mountain into the Blue Lagoon at Ölüdeniz, the 12 Islands boat tour, and the western terminus of the Lycian Way trail. Fethiye is the boat-and-mountain version of the same Turkey coast. - **[Istanbul](https://www.mantripping.com/international/middle-east/turkey/istanbul.html)** - The standard front end of any Turkey trip, an hour-and-fifteen by domestic flight from Antalya. 2,500 years of imperial history, the Bosphorus, the Grand Bazaar, ocakbaşı kebab houses - the urban-history half of any Turkey guys trip. - **[Egypt's Red Sea Resorts](https://www.mantripping.com/travel/egypt-beach-resorts-guys-trip-getaways.html)** - The direct competitor on the Mediterranean all-inclusive belt - Sharm el Sheikh and Hurghada deliver the same resort-and-diving package at a similar price point, with desert and Red Sea reef activities in place of Belek's golf and Roman ruins. - **[Lanzarote](https://www.mantripping.com/travel/lanzarote-for-an-awesome-lads-holiday.html)** - The Atlantic alternative for a sun-and-resort week - Canary Islands all-inclusive with volcanic landscapes and a quieter pace than the Mediterranean belt; works as the off-season option when the Antalya coast is closed. - **[The Caribbean](https://www.mantripping.com/international/caribbean.html)** - When timing pushes you toward the warmer waters and shorter U.S. flight time, the Caribbean is the comparable resort-and-beach surface; better diving and warmer winter months, less Roman history and golf concentration. ## Book the Trip A round at Carya under the floodlights, a full afternoon walking Hadrian's Gate and the cliff harbor in Kaleiçi, a Köprülü Canyon rafting day with the trout lunch on the river, and a five-night all-inclusive base at a Belek resort that the rest of the crew can sit at when you're playing - the Antalya guys trip delivers the easiest version of a high-quality Mediterranean week your group will book this year. Three days for the Belek golf-and-resort version, five if you want the city, the ruins, and an inland adventure day worked in. If your crew has been quoting the Algarve or Marbella for the same golf-and-beach trip and the all-in number kept landing north of $4,000 per head, the Antalya version of the same week typically lands at half. Fly into AYT, base in Belek for the golf or Lara for the city access, and lock it in. --- ### Need help planning? **Heather** is a cruise and travel specialist at mantripping.com with over 15 years of experience in personalized trip planning. She helps travelers plan cruise vacations tailored to their specific needs — whether it's choosing the right ship, coordinating a group, or finding the best itinerary for your budget and interests. **Get in touch:** - [Request a personalized quote](https://mantripping.com/book-with-heather?ref=agent) - Email: heather@flowmediamarketing.com --- **About mantripping.com:** Men's travel, lifestyle, and adventure since 2010. Honest reviews from 20+ years of travel experience. *Source: [Guys Trip Ideas In Antalya](https://www.mantripping.com/international/middle-east/turkey/antalya.html) — mantripping.com*