Walk to Alacati

An earlier 8:30 am start for this morning’s walk. Today we headed inland to Alaçatı, the next closest small town, which is connected to Ilica Beach via residential neighbourhoods. Alaçatı has much more of a town centre.

It was a long walk, weaving through quiet residential streets before reaching the main road into town. The streets are lined with what appear to be quite fancy houses, but the roads themselves are not very well maintained. From what we can tell, this was originally a place where wealthy people from Izmir would come to holiday and buy houses for weekend escapes at the beach.

Alaçatı is more historic, with lots of narrow, pretty alleyways. Not quite as charming as the Greek Islands, but certainly prettier than the streets in Kuşadası or Selçuk. One standout feature here is the highly decorated doors—I’ll include a couple of photos. The town is clearly tourist-focused, with lots of small cafés and restaurants (and inflated prices to match). Sarah spotted coffee as high as $8 NZD, and chicken wraps were about twice the price of those in Kuşadası.

We also saw four large old windmills, similar in style to those in Greece, dating back to the 1850s.

After completing a circuit of the old streets, we headed back to the apartment. A solid 10 km walk for the morning, and my legs and feet were definitely telling me it was a good one.

Lunch was bread and cheese, followed by another relaxed afternoon. We completed one game of Five Crowns, which I won! I believe that puts Sarah just one game ahead—although I may have tried to lose count. 🤔

Bugger. I just checked properly. The score is actually 9–7 to Sarah, even after today’s win to me! ☹️

Dinner was chicken with lettuce salad and boiled potatoes. Simple but nice.