Bodrum Turkey’s St Tropez is home to infinity pools, amazing food and incredible hospitality

IBIZA, Mykonos, Marbella, St Tropez . . .

With their stunning backdrops and trendy beach clubs, these are all places that influencers want to visit.

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As a showbiz editor, I have all my familiar haunts.

However, with my living costs rising rapidly and my bank balance falling to the floor, I decided it was time to diversify.

Brilliantly, it turns out, there’s a new “cool” holiday destination in town — well, port: Bodrum.

Known as both the St Tropez of Turkey and the Turkish Riviera — depending on your previous posh point of reference — this glorious spot on the Aegean is thriving. It is rightly so.

It’s also around half the price of its aforementioned Mediterranean rivals, but with glorious, unspoiled beaches, and weather to rival any of them.

Oh, and the food! We’ll get to that more later.

As someone with a pathological fear of high-rise hotels, I booked into the newly opened METT Hotel, which is situated on one of Bodrum’s most pristine stretches of beach, Haremtan Cove.

This boutique resort is minimalist and features 68 guest rooms, as well as 35 villas. Each villa has a private pool or garden.

Upon checking in, I was asked to provide my telephone number.

Turns out I hadn’t pulled, rather the absolutely faultless Guest Experience Team uses numbers for Whats-App updates to field any questions and generally be on call 24/7.

It was a service I’d never, ever experienced before and makes every single guest feel they are getting a uniquely VIP service.

Dancing on tables

This is the future for hotels. It saves the cost of calling 0 from the hotel’s in-room telephone.

Our seafront room had a large balcony which was great for watching the sunrise and enjoying a cup of coffee.

While there was no bath — but then who bathes in 30-degree heat? — the shower was a blissful jungle one, and the bed came with a “pillow menu”This, for semi-insomniacs, was no excuse to not go to bed.

(Well, that’s along with the industrial-strength melanin and nightly Turkish wine).

Although I realize that not everyone wishes to exercise during vacation, it is my decision.

Happily, there was a state-of-the-art gym overlooking both the outdoor infinity pool and ocean — plus the METT’s in-house bodybuilder personal trainer, who strutted around looking like The Rock.

After a quick infrared sauna (no idea, either) and a steam room, we had a couples’ massage in the resident spa.

It may sound like romance, but it was actually two different therapists who simultaneously pummeled us. It was bliss. It was almost masochistic.

We left at 2.45pm and were on the beach by then, just in-time for a late lunch with wine.

It turns out Turkish wine can be delicious. We found a reasonably priced £13 bottle of home-grown Sauvignon Blanc which was refreshingly dry, and slid down a little too well.

Conveniently, METT also has one of most exclusive beach clubs in the province, Folie. This looks like a combination between the Aztec zone from the Crystal Maze as well as an Ibizan al-fresco restaurant.

Offering a range of Mediterranean-fusion food, freshly caught fish specials and a resident DJ that spins suburb remixes, it’s pretty much unbeatable. Saturdays are the best days to visit. There’s a cabaret performance with singers, acrobats, and a dance group.

It was rocking at 5pm. The staff was patient and smiling as guests danced on the tables. It was incredible.

This restaurant is not suitable for children.

The METT’s other restaurant is an Italian called Isola Manzara and overlooks the whole of Bodrum, including its 15th-century castle.

All the pasta is made by the chefs, and the cocktail bar wouldn’t look out of place in buzzing London or New York, only with a backdrop considerably prettier than Tottenham Court Road.

We also have water sports available, and had fun and playful afternoons on our inflatables. “doughnuts”I was being pulled along by a speedboat. My neck still aches.

Although we could have stayed there all week, we decided not to. We instead went to another beach bar in Bodrum.

The Buddha-Bar Beach was also a 15-minute drive away from METT and featured a wide range of cocktails, champagnes, and wines.

After drinking a couple of frozen margaritas which were quite watery we moved on to Barbarossa.

The next five hours were filled with the most delicious meals I have ever had. I have had many meals. The charismatic Lambros runs this Greek restaurant. It deserves its own review.

The food, seemingly never-ending, included an exquisite prawn saganaki — giant prawns wallowing in olive oil, tomatoes, garlic, feta cheese and chilli — followed by a lobster spaghetti and a Greek version of Eton Mess.

It was then diluted with more and more local wines.

Bodrum is worth a visit. If you are looking for bargains, then a stroll around the town will be a must. They sell a variety of fakes.

Name your designer, and you can buy it — only for a fifth of the price.

I returned home with a “Louis Vuitton” wheelie suitcase (£148 as opposed to £2,140) which, if you don’t inspect the zips too closely and squint slightly, looks like the real deal. A “Hermes” bracelet (£24) was similarly convincing, although I drew the line at some fake Birkenstocks.

It’s also fun, in an adrenaline- fuelled way, to haggle with the shopkeepers all swearing blind their products are “genuine leather”.

See, you wouldn’t get that in St Tropez . . .

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