Izmir

April 20, 2015

We decided to have a city tour of Izmir rather than take the three-hour drive to Pergamum. In Kusadasi we were only about 40 miles from Izmir, the third-largest city in Turkey and Evren’s home town. Izmir had been a predominantly Greek city until after World War I. In 1918 Greek military forces landed in Izmir and began pushing eastward in a war of conquest. Turkish forces led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk began pushing back and, on September 9, 1922, defeated the Greeks and took control of Smyrna and the western seaboard of Turkey. The city has been called Izmir ever since. We saw several statues commemorating September 9, and the date is celebrated as a local holiday.

Our first stop in Izmir was to ride the elevator, or asansor in Turkish, up a steep cliff to the upper part of the city. Evren commented that 500 Turkish words are derived from French, and the word for elevator is apparently one of them. The elevator had been built in the early 20^th century and is now part of the public transit system. We rode the elevator back down and walked to a square that celebrates the beginning of the uprising against Greek occupation in May, 1919. A statue of a man in business clothes holding a gun and a flag is a focal point of the square. A baroque-looking clock tower sits in the middle of the square, and a small mosque is on the northeast corner.

Evren led us into the Kaymerali, or bazaar, of Izmir. Fodor’s highly recommends the Izmir Kaymerali and gives it one of their orange stars. It felt less touristy – more like a place Turks would shop – than did the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. Evren offered us tastes of various things, beginning with a light, fresh filo-dough roll that was delicious. He asked the street vendor to cut it into quarters so we each could have a bite. At a shop we had some breakfast pastries, one filled with spinach and the other with cheese. He found some unripe almonds and “plums” for us to eat. The plums were a bit sour, but flavorful. We later would have them pickled at the restaurant in Bodrum, where they were delicious. The unripe almonds were nothing special. We ate the almonds and plums at a coffee shop, where the shopkeeper washed them at Evren’s request. I drank a strong, dark Turkish coffee while the others had tea.

We saw lots of fresh fish on display, and other meats including beef heart and tripe. Various shops were grilling sheep’s intestines wrapped around a rotisserie. Mark and Sarah had had that in Greece, and said it tasted terrible. Sheep’s hearts, livers and other offal were wrapped inside the intestines, according to Mark. I wanted to try some for myself, but none of them were done yet – they were for consumption later in the day.

We walked through the Jewish quarter past three synagogues, each of which was labeled with a sign, but none of which are still active today. We walked out of the Kaymerali and met Murat and the van. Evren took us to a local restaurant where he ordered some Turkish dishes – spinach with little bits of beef in it, beans, chicken and rice, and bread. The food was ordered cafeteria-style, and Evren brought it to our table. We may have been the only tourists in the restaurant. As we came out of the restaurant, a man tried to talk to Mark in Turkish, but then apologized in English when Mark spoke English to him. 

Evren, looking at his watch, said that we were going to try to catch the ferry back to the other side of the bay. We were one of the last vehicles to board the ferry, just one or two cars and a semi-trailer were later than us. The ferry operators held the semi-trailer so that it was the last vehicle aboard. We sat upstairs and watched the mountains to the south of Izmir get closer, with the ferry’s red Turkish flag flapping in front of them.

Our drive back to Kusadasi was uneventful. Abby and I went to a restaurant named Mezgit, one of Evren’s recommendations, while Sarah and Mark ate potato chips in their room. We enjoyed sea bream and calamari, preceded by a delicious roasted eggplant salad as we watched the sun set behind the marina. The next day, Mark and I would walk through the marina and look at all the boats registered in Delaware, as well as Kusadasi. Evren would explain that it cost far less to register a boat in Delaware than in Turkey. For those wishing to visit Ephesus, Fodor’s recommends staying in Selcuk rather than Kusadasi, but we prefer the sunsets of Kusadasi, visible from our hotel balcony, or from the restaurants lining the waterfront.