Day 27 (22 June)

To get from Chios to Izmir, you first take the ferry to Cesme. We booked ourselves onto an Erturk ferry.

The journey started a little shambolically. We never found out the whole story, but it seems the boat we had been due to travel on was not there for some reason, so the whole kit and caboodle of cars and foot-passengers was being redistributed to two other boats. We were allocated the little boat, which we shared with about 100 other people and two cars...

It's only a short trip to Cesme, and about 40 minutes after leaving, we were queuing for immigration.

From the port it's about a 20-minute walk to Cesme Otogar. Here you can pick up a bus to Uckuyular, which is where you can swap onto Izmir's metro system. (You can, of course, also go to Izmir Otogar from here, but that's way out east, and not so handy for the centre of the city.)

A ticket to Uckuyular (about an hour or so's ride) costs TRY 20. It's a comfortable bus, the scenery is quite nice, and they even give you water.

(We had tried to book these tickets online, but couldn't get the system to allow us -- a man and a woman -- to sit together. The best we could do was sit across the aisle from each other... If you buy your tickets at the office, there's no such problem, and departures seem to be sufficiently frequent that you don't really need to book ahead.)

Once at Uckuyular, you just walk down the stairs to the metro (Fahrettin Altay station). Eight stops later you're at Basmane Gar. This is the station we'll leave from, and it's very close to the Hotel Baylan, where we're spending the next couple of nights.

Izmir feels a tad frenetic. We've obviously got used to the island pace of Chios...

But it's pleasant. We had a large lunch ("red rice", chicken, green beans, haricot beans, salad, bread, tea, and water) for TRY 41 (MYR 29 or EUR 6). Wow, we can afford things again...

The city sits on a huge inlet, ringed by mountains. On an evening walk along the seafront you get to see all sorts of water craft, lots of hopeful fishermen, and a huge variety of folks strolling, cycling, and roller-skating.

There are pushcarts selling stuffed mussels or corn cobs. And there's the call to prayer... I've so missed it. I don't care what religion you are, the Muslim call to prayer resonates with the soul.

I feel I'm back in Asia again, and that's very, very good...





Basmane is one of the neighbourhoods where refugees have gathered in recent years, waiting for the door to open to their next step. (This is a moving account of some of their experiences here. But such stories are to be found all along our route, from Bari to Athens to Chios.)


Day 28 (23 June)

Izmir is the successor of the ancient city of Smyrna. The best testament to that is the Agora, the Greco-Roman marketplace that was the commercial and legal centre of life. It is thought to date back to the 4th century BC, functioned as the main market place until the 7th century AD, and is still very atmospheric today.








Near the Agora we walked some lovely streets, still Sunday-morning-quiet.





The rest of the day played out quietly:

We drank Turkish tea.

We had a kumru sandwich (white cheese and tomato in a sesame roll), sitting by the seaside.

We tried the local beer, the Izmir-brewed Efes Pilsen.

We walked in the park in the cool of the evening (OK, maybe not exactly cool...).

A pretty good day.

But tomorrow we're moving on again...