Every morning when we wake up we see the sun rising over Turkey. The turkish coast is only 30 km away from Chios island. So since Turkey is that close, we took the chance of the long weekend and booked a ferry for Saturday morning on the 26th of October.
After realizing at the bus station that there wouldn`t be a bus at 7:00 am on a Saturday in Greece we called a taxi and luckily made it to the port in time. Only 20 minutes later we already stepped on the Turkish ground. Since we left the European Union we had to wait a bit in the line for the passport control in Cesme, the city which is the closest to Chios but after this it was time to explore a new country.
With the bus we made our way to Izmir which is the 3rd biggest city of Turkey and about one and a half hours away from Cesme. A bit confuesd we arrived in the middle of the city without any Turkish Lyra and without any possibility to use our phones since we left the EU. It must have been our faces which made a women who surprisingly spoke german help us. The amount of people who spoke german was one of the things that surprised all of us many times during this trip.
Around noon we finally made it to our hostel where we quickly stored our stuff and also collected some tipps for the city. Our first destination was the Kemeralti Market. The Kemeralti Market is not what we would call a market, it is a whole district with many small streets full of little stalls. On this bazaar you can basically buy everthing from clothes to home decore and food. After wandering through the streets for a while we were really hungry and decided to take a break in one of the restaurants to try some Turkish food. The pricing of the food was another thing that we discovered druing our stay. For a huge delicious plate full of turksih dishes we only paid something around 5 euro. Well strengthened we then walked to the historic clock tower which is located at the end of the bazaar district next to the sea. The Ottoman architectured tower is one of the town`s landmarks and was built in 1901 for the 25th anniversary of Abdülhamid ll`s accession to the throne. From there we walked along the seaside to the Alsancak district. This district is full of little cafes and bars. So we did another break here for some late afternoon coffee and cake. On our way back to the hostel we crossed the Kültürpark. A lovely place in the middle of the city and the perfect spot to relax a bit more after this long day. Back at the hostel we met the other guests of the hostel which were people from all around the world. We ended up having a really fun night all together.
The next day we started with a really tasty and big turkish breakfast at the seaside. After this we walked to the Kemeralti market again to do some shopping. We got fresh spices and nuts for our house. When you are in the streets of the market you don`t realize how quick the time passes. For us this meant that it was already time to go to the bus station and take the bus back to Cesme. In Cesme we had a bit of time left so we got some snacks and walked slowly to the port along the sea. With the sunset we entered the ferry and arrived 20 minutes later tired but happy back on Chios island.
Although it was only a very short trip we had lots of fun exploring Turkey and collected many nice memories together.
To see all our pictures, go to our gallery!
