A day in Çesme

10.5.25

An interesting nights sleep by the little harbour, after finally catching the mozzie that was otherwise going to eat us alive. At 4am there was a huge clap of thunder, a bit of rain, and noises that sounded like they were definitely unloading fishing nets and banging buckets right next to the van. Remember when you’d wet your finger and run it round a glass? (hopefully not just me!) Well, there was distant music that sounded just like that.

We went for a walk to the bakery. We bought 2 tahini simits and a normal loaf for later. 210tl. The same in our Fethiye baker is 135tl. The simits had a horrible cinnamon flavour and the bread was child sized.

We would have liked a lettuce and scoured all the usual supermarkets and a green grocer, but they all looked manky. However I did discover a large Heinz ketchup on offer in Bim so bought that instead.

We decided to leave where we were parked as there was nowhere to put out our table and chairs. We spotted a virtually empty huge car parking area on our lettuce hunt, so headed that way. Google sent us the wrong way so we ended up near the harbour with a grass border and sat and enjoyed the warm sunshine. It was perfect even with the occasional gust of wind that almost blew our rummicub tiles away.

We headed back towards our original parking space near the race start point later in the afternoon. To get down to the town involved a steep cobbled road. Not the right time for flip flops.

We collected John’s racepack and had a wander around the town. It’s lovely!! We didn’t see any of that when we came years ago, but we were only getting on a cruise ship.

We called into Turk Telekom to switch from Turkcell. Their mobile deals are much cheaper. I have no package at all at the moment, hence no blog uploads. I should be up and running in 3 days. It’ll feel like an eternity. I’m realising how addicted I am to being online.

Çeşme is quaint, Greek looking and I always love pretty narrow streets and alleyways. We’re very impressed. The streets and gardens are beautifully maintained, very little littering.

I’ve memorised how to get back to the van tomorrow after I leave John for his run. Turn left by the shop with loads of suncream in the window. 3036 Sokak. Up towards the mens tea house, where we saw a small car trying to tow a pick up truck stuck in builders waste , backwards, up a steep hill. It failed miserably, although it could have won an award for producing the most smoke. We stopped watching this spectacle as John was toying with the idea of pushing the pick up truck. Sorry, but not with his ongoing golfers elbow.

So, then up another hill towards a tailor shop, up lots of steps, up the cobbled hill of extreme steepness and back to Naz. Simples.

We made chicken doner half breads with our tiny, although very tasty bread and ate too many crisps whilst watching a film based on a true story called Misbehaviour. It was about a group of women who disrupted the 1970 Miss World contest in London. Worth a watch just to see how far womens liberation has come since then.

John is currently taping up his toes ready for tomorrows 8am start.

Early bed time for us, although he rarely sleeps well before a run.

Goodnight from an unexpectedly beautiful Çesme