Limping Around Central Kuşadası

The call to prayer was my alarm this morning at 5:54 a.m. It lasted until almost 6 a.m., and it seemed to me that it also woke Sarah, but she then went back to sleep. I couldn’t fall back asleep, so I read my book. Sarah later told me she never heard anything. 😁

The hotel served breakfast at 8:30 a.m., which is late for us, but we’re adaptable. 😉 There was a good selection of food, but it wasn’t great. They did have some of the largest olives I’ve ever eaten—massive! 👍 Tomorrow we’re going to turn up slightly early, as today the scrambled eggs were quite cold. They had obviously been prepared and were ready before the official start time.

I was quite sore again when I got up and was still sore after breakfast. I wasn’t going to let that stop us from having a short walk and looking around our new neighbourhood. We decided to head down our street, which leads into the main touristy parts of town. It was also the opposite direction from our arrival walk. We passed a currency exchange where we swapped €40 for 1,800 Turkish Lira (₺).

Next stop was an ATM where we withdrew ₺10,000. Yep—we’re feeling rich with so many folding notes. It was about $443 NZD equivalent. Hopefully it will be enough cash for a week or two if we can also use our Wise debit card. Smaller businesses and buses only take cash here, or so we’ve been told. Similar to Greece, but even more cash-oriented.

The ATM street led us onto the waterfront, where there were a number of sculptures to check out and photos to take of the harbour. There are four large cruise boats docked today, so town will be busy later. We continued our walk along the waterfront past where we arrived yesterday. The more I walked, the better I started to feel. That’s similar to yesterday, which I think is a good sign.

We walked towards Pigeon Island, hoping to get a picture of the Kuşadası sign. We never quite got the right angle for a good photo though. ☹️ We’ll check out the island tomorrow, all going well, and maybe find a good place to photograph the sign. It very much reminds me of the HOLLYWOOD sign in Los Angeles, which I’m sure others can relate to.

We carried on past Pigeon Island, slowly climbing the hill up to the Atatürk Statue. There is an Atatürk memorial near Wellington Airport in New Zealand.

The Atatürk memorial was New Zealand’s response to the Turkish government building a commemorative site at Anzac Cove (which they renamed from Ari Burnu). It was a mutual sign of respect between Anzac and Turkish soldiers from World War I.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was the first president of the Republic of Türkiye (Turkey).

The statue is very tall, and the walk up to it was quite steep and hot, but it was worth it for the views. We could see out over the port as well as over the city. The city is larger than we thought, given that we can only see a small piece of it from ground level. Apparently, the population here is only about 130,000 people. A lot of what we could see might be hotels and apartments for the large numbers of tourists that come here to visit a nearby ancient city. More about that another day. Türkiye’s total population is around 85 million.

Photos taken of the views, we descended via a different route. We dropped literally straight back down into where our hotel is situated. It was a mixture of steps and very steep streets, through what we would call the “real” residences of Kuşadası—pretty basic and run-down buildings that had Sarah slightly concerned. Yet halfway down, we met a lovely Turkish man who approached us on a flatter section. He was concerned we were trying to find our way to the top and had got lost. Once he figured out we were heading down, he was much happier for us. 😂

Back at the hotel, we kept heading down, covering ground we had already done. We needed to go down again to get some water from a supermarket. Water acquired, we decided to grab lunch while in the touristy food area: a real Turkish kebab wrap (dürüm) with chicken and vegetables. “Real” as in it was our first in Turkey. We might need to sample a few more non-touristy centre options to decide how authentic it was. 😉

Finally, back at the hotel for a cool down and then a swim in the pool. Surprisingly, the water was freezing, and after two lengths I was ready to warm back up sitting in the shade reading. We spent the rest of the afternoon either down near the pool or back in our room doing just that.

For dinner we ticked off two important tasks: sampling some authentic Turkish food and checking where our bus leaves from in two days time—or at least confirming it leaves from where we think it does. The bus system here is a little bit different. For our next short hop, we’re hoping to take a dolmuş (minivan) just 30 minutes to another small nearby city. A less touristy city, we think. 🤔

The main dolmuş and bus station is a 1.5 km walk away. We weren’t sure if it would require a taxi or not. Potentially, if I’m not feeling great or if it’s up a big hill, we might not be able to walk it with our packs. It turned out not to be too hilly. It’s along a mixture of dodgy-looking (I mean real) back streets and a busy main road. We found the station and the right bus queue area and decided that walking should be fine.

On the way back, we stopped at a small family café restaurant that Sarah had seen mentioned in an online blog. It was called Keyif Cafe. It’s run by the mother, but we were directed to her son, who was working on a small boat out front. He spoke English, so we didn’t need Google Translate or sign language to feed ourselves. He was actually great to talk to. He lives and works mainly in Italy as a luxury boat captain for an Italian fashion designer. He comes home to help out his parents when the owner of the boats doesn’t need him to take them places.

He told us about Kuşadası and about Turkey in general. He said things are very difficult and blames the current government for many of the country’s financial issues. (Note: Turkey currently has an inflation rate of 33%, down from a whopping 52% last year. Crazy numbers!) He explained how not that long ago the euro-to-lira conversion was 1 to 11, and now each euro gets 50 lira.

After chatting to him, our food was ready and he went back to his boat maintenance. He’s fixing up an old boat he purchased to sell for a profit, then intends to do it again and again.

His mum cooked both dishes for us. One was prepared completely from scratch, and Sarah watched her roll out the dough and coat it with minced meat and vegetables before cooking it on a large outdoor hotplate she had set up. The other dish she cooked inside. That one was called Ekmek Arası Tost—bread with meatballs toasted. The outdoor dish didn’t have a name on the menu but was described as minced meat and spinach. It looked like a scallion pancake in appearance. We shared both, and they were delicious. Total cost was ₺550, or about $23 NZD, including two cans of soft drink.

We then walked back to the apartment through the slightly dodgy-looking back streets, which were at least well lit.