Years ago, one of Turkey’s most famous pop-rock groups, MFÖ released a song entitled, “Bodrum, Bodrum”; “How do I describe it, where do I begin, Bodrum, Bodruuuum,” was how it started. Since then, it has become the unofficial anthem of this popular summer resort.

Most Turks have a Bodrum memory; the town is like an autonomous region inside Turkey, with its own private set of rules, one of which is that the evening doesn’t start until misnight!

A wonder of the ancient world

Bodrum Village

Bodrum’s original name was Halicarnassus. According to the celebrated historian Herodotus, who was a native of this town, the city was first founded by the Dorians. In 650 BC, the Megarans took it over, expanded it, and renamed it Halicarnassus. In the 4th century BC, the city became the capital of Caria, and went on to become prosperous and successful. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus was built by Queen Artemisia in honor of her husband Mausolus, who died in 353 BC. Today, only scant ruins of the great tomb remain.

An ancient theater beside the road to Turgutreis has been beautifully restored and is worth a quick look. Work on it started during the reign of Mausolos, although it was extended by the Romans.

Later, Bodrum was conquered by the Romans and Byzantines. In 1415, it was captured by the Knights Hospitaller of Rhodes, and in 1522, during the reign of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, it became a part of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey’s largest lake, Lake Van, sprawls over an area of 3,750 square kilometers. It’s a beautiful and mesmerizing place that retreats into silence once the sun goes down. On its shores stands the modern town of Van, which was probably founded by the Assyrian queen Semiramis, nearly 4,000 years ago.

The mosaic of civilization that has created Turkey is very colorful. Wherever you go, you come across yet another all but forgotten civilization, or even several different civilizations piled on top of one another. Van is typical of these palimpsest locations, having played host to a wide range of ancient civilizations, from the Hurris to the Urartians, and from Alexander the Great to the Romans. The Urartians called Van, Tuşba, and made it their capital in 832 BC. Otherwise, very little is known about them, although they carved long cuneiform inscriptions into the walls of Van Castle.

Van Cat

In recent years, Van has had to cope with considerable migration from the surrounding countryside. It has also been enlivened by the creation of . Yüzüncü Yıl University. If you arrive here by boat from Tatvan to the west, you will be amazed by the size of the modern city. The newer suburbs are almost four kilometers further inland than the old lakeside town.

Right at the heart of Van, Cumhuriyet Caddesi serves an “all roads lead to Rome” function. From hotels to breakfast shops, from the museum to the main market, it all seems to be happening along Cumhuriyet Caddesi.

What to do ?
Van Museum has some magnificent items on display. As you trace a historical, journey that started araund 9,000 BC, be sure to note the rare tombstones from Hakkari.

Pay visit to Van University’s Cat House to see white Van cats, which are supposedly able to for their, mismatched eyes ( one blue and one yellow ), in some cases they two blue eyes.

After Şems disappearance, Mevlana retreated further into the world of Sufism and began writing his 25,000-verse masterpiece, the Mesnevi. For him, death was merely reunion with God and so a cause for celebration. Thus, 17 December, the date of his death (or his “nuptial night”, as it is referred to) is celebrated with semas (ceremonies) at which Mevlevi dervished perform their famous whirling dance. With their wide white skirts and conical headdresses symbolizing the ego’s shroud and tomb respectively, the dervished slowly revolve, passing divine energy from the Creator to his creations.

Antalya was founded by the Pergamum King Attalos II in the 2nd century BC. Legend has it that Attalos instructed his soldiers to find “heaven on earth” and that after a long and tedious search across the world, his men offered the king this city, which he named Attaleia. Today, Attalos statue stands across from the Clock Tower. The magnificent Hadrian’s Gate, on the other hand, is named after the Roman Emperor Hadrian, who visited the city in 130 BC.

Antalya, Oludeniz, Turkey

Antalya was an important harbor during the Crusades and served as a base for soldiers on their way to the Holy Land. Conquered by the Ottomans during Sultan Bayezid’s reign, the Italians in 1918. It’s a city that has attracted travelers throughout history and Ibn Battuta, who visited in the 14th century, wrote that the Egyptians called lemons “Adalia” because so many were exproted from Antalya. Having traversed the area in 1671. Evliya Çelebi noted that the city walls were 4400m in length, and had 80 bastions, and that the 200 fountains received their water from the Düden Creek.

Famous for the Kaleiçi (Old Town) with its lovely old Ottoman houses, the Yivli Minare (Fluted Minaret) and the beaches along the coast, Antalya also has a wonderful museum.An incredible collection spans a wide time frame with exhibits from the Stone Age to the Ottoman period. The most outstanding pieces are from the Roman era; the statuary alone would be enough to rank the museum among the top five in Turkey. In ancient times, Antalya was surrounded by Pisidia in the north. Pamphylia (”the land of all tribes”) in the east, and Lycia in the west.

Because of its position at the crossroads of all the most important transport routes, the city acquired an incredible historical heritage, and the museum doesn’t have enough space to accommodate all the finds from local archaeological sites.

There are many things to do in Antalya and its environs; ski in Saklıkent in the winter, go to the ancient city of Selge near Köprüçay (which is perfect for rafting), visit Sillyum, see Side, get some rest in Manavgat, discover the ruins of Olympos, and wander amid the cedar trees in the ancient city of Idebessos on the northern slopes of Aykırca Creek. With time to venture a bit further, you can also admire one of the most beautiful Greek theaters in the world at Arycanda near Finike, and enjoy some trout at one of the many local fish farms.

The site of a famous love affair…
Some sources say that Side originally meant “pomegranate”, and the pomegranate is the symbol of abundance and wealth. The city experianced its period of greatest prosperity in Roman times when it was a flourishing trade center with a large slave market. Some sources also suggest that it served as a lovenest for Cleopatra and Mark Anthony.

As you walk towards the bazaar from the bus station you will pass a beautiful, newly excavated Roman fountain and then the remains of a colonnaded street once lined with ancient shops. The theater, which has a seating capacity of 15,000, is still used today. Side Museum is housed in what was once the old Roman bath-house; it has a delightful back garden full of stone sarcophagi. The Temples of Apollo and Athena overlooking the sea were built in the 2nd century AD. Few things could be nicer than sipping an evening drink at once of the cafes beside the temples. Protected by its land and sea walls, the ancient city of Side survived the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Unfortunately, the aesthetic beauty of the ancient buildings has not found echoes in many of the structures thrown up in recent years.

Side, Turkey

Side’s historic sites are some walk from the bazaar in the heat, but the Municipality provides a Disneyesque tractor and trailer to get people from place to place in summer.

More local tourists
Traditionally, Side has been favored by the Germans and the Dutch, but ever since the five-star resorts lowered their prices for dometic tourists, the town has seen an increase in turkish visitors.

Beautiful Night in Alanya

Modern Alanya is dominated by a huge plug of rock topped off with the remains of a Seljuk castle. This is by far the most interesting part of what is a predominantly modern city. Make it easy on yourself by taking a bus or taxi up and then walking the three kilometers down again to take advantage of the wonderful sea views and to visit the other minor sites on the rock, including a fine Ottoman mosque and bedesten (covered market). Some lovely old Ottoman houses still cling to the hillside as well.

Of Alanya’s several caves, the most famous is the Damlataş Mağrası (Dripping Stone Cave), whose humid atmosphere is supposedly good for asthmatics. Some people will prefer the less crowded Dim Mağarası (Cave), known as the “Gavur İni” (Cave of the Infidel) to the locals. Being the seaside resort it is, Alanya offers a great choice of daily boat tours which visit the Korsanlar, Aşıklar, and Fosforlu Caves, as well as the Cleopatra and Ulaş beaches.

The local museum contains small but interesting archaeological and ethnological collections. The house in which Atatürk stayed overnight on 18 February 1935 is also open to the public.

Kızılkule is the symbol of the city
Although the city of Alanya dates back for many centuries, it never played a major role in history. However, when Alaeddin Keykubat commissioned a Syrian architect to build the aptly-named Kızılkule (the Red Tower) in 1226, he put the city on the world map. Eighty-seven steps lead to the top and a spectacular view out over the sea. The Tersane is another local attraction. Also commissioned by Keykubat, this dockyard, built in 1228, is the only example of its kind to survive from the Seljuk period. The tower next to it is known to have been used as an armory.

A thriving modern town
Originally called Dorylaeon by the Greeks and Dorileaum by the Romans, Eskişehir was probably established near an old Phrygian settlement on the banks of the Porsuk River. Famed for its thermal baths, the city prospered through trade and acquired city status in 1925. Through trade and manufacturing, it has always been a prosperous city; it was also the cradle of civil aviation in Turkey and is home to the Anadolu University, one of the country’s biggest institutions of higher learning. After years of hard work, Eskişehir’s star is once again in the ascendant, the new tram (”the Estram”) a symbol of its go-ahead outlook.

Eskisehir, Turkey

Eskişehir may be an “old town” in name, but there’s not a great deal left to see of its past in the town center which was badly damaged during the Turkish War of Independence. Recently, the surviving 19th-century pastel-colored houses in the Odunpazarı (Wood Market) neighborhood have been given a makeover, making it one of the most enjoyable areas to explore.

It’s worth taking a stroll along bustling, pedestrian Hamamyolu Caddesi, where every other shop seems to sell sweets. The large 16th-century Kurşunlu and Haznedar Camii (Mosques) are also worth a visit; the former might be a work of the famous architect Sinan. Spare some time, too, for the museums: the Archaeological Museum, which contains some of the finds from Dorileaum; the Atatürk and Culture Museum; and the Beylerbeyi Konağı, an Ottoman House which is sporadically open to the public.

Don’t leave town without taking a dip in one of the thermal baths. Public baths can be found at the junction of Hamamyolu and Savtekin Caddesis (street), or you can book into a hotel which boasts its own thermal waters.

Meerschaum country
Eskişehir is famous for its light, white meerschaum stone, a substance which is not common elsewhere in the world. It has been mined and processed here for nearly 5,000 years, and many beautiful pipes and other astonishingly elaborate objects made from meerschaum (which means “sea foam” in German) are on display in the small Lületaşı Müzesi (Meerschaum Museum).

Amasra, Turkey

Amasra was named after the Persian Princess Amastris and is one of the oldest settlements in Anatolia. In the course of history, the town passed through Pontic, Roman and Genoese hands. Then Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror seized it in 1460. The largest church was converted into a mosque, and Amasra became one of the most beautiful Ottoman towns.

Not much remains of old Amasra, although the spectacular Kuşkaya (Bird Rock) monument at the entrance of the town dates back to the 1st century BC. You can also visit the remains of the Byzantine citadel astride a promontory with fine views out to sea.

The Amasra Museum contains exhibits from Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman times. The building served as a Marine Academy during the Ottoman period.

The two off-shore islands, Boztepe (Gray Hill) and Tavşan Adası (Rabbit Island) are accessible by boat. Alternatively, you can get to Boztepe by crossing the Kemere Bridge, which was built in Roman times. It’s a good road with a wonderful view.

A seaside film set
Amasra used to be througt of primarily as a summer resort for people from Ankara, but the locals have grown accustomed to an increasing number of visitors ever since their town was used as the set for a Turkish movie. In the summer, and especially on weekends, the hotels are frequently full.

Walking down the main road in Istanbul’s old city the next morning, I was pulled out of my reverie when an older, heavily mustachioed man leaned out the window of his rickety car and boomed, “American?”

Suddenly aware of my short sleeves and skirt on a trip last summer to a city where many women wear long coats even in hot weather, I smiled sheepishly.

“Ah, have a good day!” he yelled in English, breaking a wide grin, to which all I could do was reply “cok iyi,” meaning very good, the Turkish words I had learned on my first day here in an impromptu lesson from a taxi driver.

And so the friendliness of Turkish strangers accompanied me for the three weeks I spent in Istanbul and along Turkey’s Aegean coast, where I found a wealth of antiquities, architecture and art with few parallels in the Mediterranean, not to mention impossibly blue seas and feasts of small plates known as mezes at non-euro prices.

From Istanbul, I made a daylong drive to the stunning northern Aegean village of Assos. Swimming off its pebbly beach into empty green-blue waters, under cliffs studded with olive trees and humming with cicadas, near ruins visited by both Aristotle and St. Paul, was such perfection that I nearly spent the rest of my vacation there. After all, the camel I saw slurping tree leaves off a dusty road seemed happy to stay where he was.

But Greco-Roman sites, Byzantine and Islamic art masterpieces, and untouched Mediterranean scenery beckoned, and everywhere, people went out of their way to make this stranger welcome.

GRECO-ROMAN SPLENDOR: To grumble, as many tour books do, that there is not much to see at Troy is akin to calling the Eiffel Tower a jumble of iron bars. True, technically, but that is to ignore the breathless feeling of gazing at walls and columns where Homeric heroes lived 3,000 years ago, of looking over the same cultivated plain baking in the midday heat.

Ancient Greek civilizations built acropolises a few hours south of Troy, none more “high city” than Pergamon, where the remains of a superb temple and a theater from the third century B.C. are carved atop a barren mountain. Not far off are evocative ruins of three Ionian cities, including the giant theater of Miletus and the elaborately carved columns of the Dydima temple, so tall that you feel Lilliputian. My favorite is Priene, lying on the side of a pine-covered hill so utterly off the tourist routes that the only noise I heard was the tinkle of sheep bells amid the 2,300-year-old streets.

None of these sites, nor most ancient ruins anywhere, can top the exuberance of nearby Ephesus, the Roman city halfway down the Aegean coast that dominated the Eastern classical world.

You can still walk its main marble road to the richly carved library and gigantic theater, past squares, statues, and what must have been the wealthiest Romans’ penthouse apartments.

Even in Rome there hardly is so much ancient luxury on display as in these terrace houses, with halls covered in marble panels, realistic wall paintings and intricate floor mosaics of mythical scenes.

BYZANTINES AND OTTOMANS: First the Byzantine, then the Ottoman empires gave even more impressive heft and sparkle to their capital, Istanbul, in their golden eras in the sixth and 16th centuries.

For sheer grandeur, the stunners are Byzantine Haghia Sophia and the Ottomans’ Blue Mosque. I spent many nights contemplating them from the rooftop terrace of my small Sultanahmet hotel, as seagulls swooped in between the floodlights washing over their stadium-sized domes. Meanwhile, the concierge, Erhan Orkun, fussed to get me a 21st century luxury: flawless wireless.

You don’t even realize how extraordinarily high and wide Haghia Sophia’s gold tile-covered dome is until you climb up ramp after ramp of stairs to the gallery, and the mosaics still look far away.

The best Byzantine mosaics are hidden away on central Istanbul’s edge, in the jewel-box Kariye church. I would have never found it had a fully veiled woman I stopped on a deserted street not walked a mile out of her way to lead me up a warren of alleys.

The interior shines with 14th-century mosaics portraying Gospel stories with so much realism that you feel Mary’s hesitation as she stands outside Joseph’s house as a new bride, wringing her hands.

Similarly, while skyline-dominating giants like Suleymaniye mosque and Topkapi palace, for 400 years the sultans’ vast residence, impress with their massive play of shapes, my Ottoman favorite was a tiny mosque hidden near the Spice Bazaar, Rustem Pasa.

The dark space, cooled by a breeze off the Golden Horn, bursts into the vivid blues and greens of the precious Iznik tiles that cover it in intricate floral and abstract designs.

APOLLO’S SWIMMING HOLE: You can dive into that vivid blue in the sea off Oludeniz natural park, where the Aegean meets the Mediterranean. Surrounded by tall mountains covered in fragrant brush and pines, with wisps of clouds perched on their tops, it felt like the swimming hole of the ancient gods.

Not that there isn’t competition for sea-lovers. I spent a day cruising the Bosporus on a friend’s sailing boat, downing ayran, the signature salty yogurt drink, past Ottoman palaces and fortresses.

Off a tiny cove in the sadly overdeveloped Bodrum peninsula, a kid engaged me in a freestyle competition through crystalline water as his grandmother, decked out in a turquoise long-sleeved suit, blue Crocs and pink noodle, patiently tried out a few strokes.

From my terrace at one of the peninsula’s many luxury hotels, Lavanta, overlooking Yalikavak harbor, I watched the sun set over Greek islands as a muezzin’s call to prayer wafted over the whitewashed village up to the windmills topping the barren hills.

If Bodrum has luxe, the Datca peninsula just to the south has solitude. Near the ruins of Knidos, a seventh-century B.C. Greek town, I spent an hour floating in transparent water without seeing a soul.

A few hours south of there, in Patara, I found miles of sandy beach popular with sea turtles, past an arch and other ruins of an ancient Lycian city. It’s a tough call, but I might have had the best meal of the trip in Patara, under the grape arbor of St. Nicholas restaurant. Mezes kept flowing, ranging from tangy beyaz peynir cheese (a Turkish version of feta) to grilled fish and lamb to a dazzling variety of dishes made with eggplant (“patlican,” which means eggplant, is essential Turkish vocabulary).

And of course, I ended up deep in conversation with the owner’s son, a young man just out of architecture school, who shared his dream of a green development in Patara so that “in five years you might read of me.”

“Cok iyi,” I told him, and I hoped that first Istanbul cab driver would have been proud.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/27/istanbul-and-aegean-coast_0_n_1237041.html

By Jennifer Chen
Photographs by Tara Sharma

Above: Beach-bound near the low-key resort town of Alaçatı

We were tired of being cold. The March weather had made our two-week trip to Turkey a parody of a vacation gone awry. Heavy rain dogged us in Istanbul, Bursa was frozen with sleet, and the North Aegean coast greeted us with doleful, gray skies. “The good thing is there are no other tourists around … for a reason,” my husband joked as gale-force winds lashed the windshield of our rental car. Holiday spirits and good-humored fortitude were fading fast with each weather map that forecasted much of the country blanketed in either snowflakes or driving rain. It was, we agreed, time to head south.

But to where? With only a few days to go on our road trip, the fabled resorts of Anatolia’s Mediterranean coast were beyond our reach. Driving in Turkey can be a monotonous affair. Distances are often longer than you think, and while there are serene stretches—rolling hills of pine forest, groves of olive trees, a hamlet of weathered stone dwellings—much of what you see along the main motorways is grim and utilitarian. We passed gargantuan gas stations and housing blocks in dusty mauve or lime green that would rival China’s slapdash urban architecture in its breathtaking hideousness.

Our chosen salvation, picked almost at   random, was the Çeşme Peninsula, a 30-kilometer-long promontory that is, after Cape Baba to the north, the country’s—and Asia’s—westernmost point. It didn’t require heroic,  caffeine-enhanced driving. More alluringly, the forecast was fair with sunny skies.

The peninsula’s azure Aegean waters attract beachgoers throughout the year, particularly in summer.

Fortunes for this forgotten corner of the empire began to turn in the 1800s when Smyrna’s wealthy began building lavish summer homes to take advantage of the fine beaches, aquamarine waters, and hot springs. Driving past Smyrna, now known less evocatively as İzmir, I can picture the rites of long-gone summers: well-fed wives of prosperous merchants sorting out the linen, silver, and rugs, children and pets underfoot, while servants hastily pack the unwieldy caravans of coaches—all desperate to set out before the morning sun became unbearable.

It isn’t difficult to conjure up a modern day version of this scene—the 21st-century descendants of Smyrna’s summering crowds fleeing the city’s heat, dust, and smog in their minivans. We had to chart our own escape route to the peninsula. After plying a lonely southerly coastal road punctuated only by yet more gas stations, we steer our car through the tangle of highways surrounding İzmir, a sprawling metropolis of featureless concrete slabs. It’s dauntingly, almost aggressively ugly, though the graceful sweep of the bay helps to soften the scene.

A hair-raising few minutes brings us perilously close to the city, and then we’re safely on the toll road to Çeşme. Shopping malls and car parks give way to fields of artichokes, aniseed, and sesame; apartment towers are replaced by orchards of twisted fig and mastic trees. Minus the occasional wind turbine, the landscape can’t have changed much from the way it looked a century ago. We drive in appreciative silence, absorbing the rocky, brush-covered hills that give the terrain a melancholy beauty.

Our arrival at the Taş Otel in the resort town of Alaçatı does little to dispel this sense of timelessness. A whitewashed stone house with indigo shutters, the hotel had once been the home of two sisters who kept their livestock downstairs while their family occupied the second floor. These are the unlikely origins of Alaçatı’s current renaissance as the peninsula’s toniest summer destination. In 2000, Zeynep Öziş, a marketing executive and keen windsurfer from İzmir, bought the 19th-century house. The renovation required a small army of masons, carpenters, and electricians and provoked a chorus of skepticism from neighbors. “They thought I was crazy,” Öziş recalls. Ten months later, the town’s first bona fide boutique hotel made its debut.

Kemalpaşa Caddesi, Alaçatı’s main drag, is lined with Greek buildings that date back more than a century.

Fresh local flavors.

Oğlum is soon followed by Öziş, a petite blonde woman who seems to bustle even while she’s standing still. Showing us a photo book she helped to compile about Alaçatı’s distinctive stone houses and history, she sketches the town’s past for us. As with so many settlements along the Aegean Coast, it’s a tale of banishment and exile amid the slow collapse of an empire.

Alaçatı began its climb out of obscurity in the 1990s, when windsurfers discovered the harbor’s favorable winds. Years of neglect meant the town was in a state of near-perfect preservation, filled with century-old stone houses

In the 1830s, Turkish landlords bequeath-ed land to Greek workers brought over to drain the nearby malarial swamps. For a few decades, the town, then known as Alatsata, flourished as a local hub of winemaking and olive-oil production. But the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 flooded the region with Muslim refugees from Kosovo, Bosnia, and the Greek city of Thessaloniki. More disruption was to follow. In 1923, as an upshot of the Second Greco-Turkish War, a bilateral population exchange saw nearly half a million Greek Muslims deported to Turkey and more than a million Anatolian Greeks sent in the other direction. Left behind in Alaçatı were the vineyards and olive groves, which soon withered under the inexpert care of the new residents who had cultivated tobacco and bred livestock in their former lives. But the soil proved unsuitable for the émigrés’ traditional pursuits, and the townsfolk led a hardscrabble existence.

Alaçatı’s long climb out of obscurity began in the 1990s, when windsurfers such as Öziş discovered the favorable winds in the nearby harbor. Years of neglect meant the town was in a state of near-perfect preservation, filled with century-old stone houses with arched windows and thick walls that warded off the winter chill and the summer heat. Since the Taş’s debut, the pace of gentrification has hit warp speed, fueled by a peak-season population that surges to 60,000. Now, by official decree, all new houses must mimic the old.

Woven-rush umbrellas shade a stretch of sand outside Alaçatı.

These days, Alaçatı’s season is undeniably summer—a fact we are reminded of as we wander past the shuttered shops and restaurants along the town’s winding cobblestone streets. Here and there are signs of the town’s newly minted trendiness: a Yastık By Rıfat Özbek boutique selling costly, exquisite ikat cushion covers; a flyer advertising the local outpost for Babylon, Istanbul’s eternally cool music club.

But for now, the town dozes in the thin spring light. Two slim girls minding a baklava shop that looks impervious to fashion watch us impassively. A tiny storefront selling small souvenir bottles of olive oil and pots of pine honey is miraculously open, though the grandmotherly figure keeping watch over the wares seems too astonished to see us to make a bid for sales. At one café on the main drag of Kemalpaşa Caddesi, a well-groomed couple in black—she with honey-colored hair and fur-collared coat, he with wraparound shades—sit outside, hands clutched around takeaway cappuccinos. We trade knowing looks with a neighboring shopkeeper and shrug in agreement: Istanbulis, harbingers of the summertime crowds to come.

Though we’re several months early for the season, we can at least indulge in the peninsula’s fine, summery fare. That has been the best surprise of our journey so far. Having girded ourselves and our digestions for hearty helpings of lamb, we’ve discovered that the dishes served along the coast are light and nourishing, laced with golden, elegant local olive oil: wild, bitter greens foraged from the countryside and sautéed; roasted eggplant mixed with tangy yogurt and a hint of garlic; vine leaves stuffed with rice and mussels.

At Agrilia, a tobacco warehouse converted into a restaurant, we start with a cracked-wheat salad with tomatoes, peppery arugula, and a dressing made with üzüm pekmezi, grape molasses that adds a rich, but not cloying, sweetness. Artichokes, we’ve learned, are a regional specialty, so we order the house-made pappardelle with artichokes, white wine, and pistachios—a dish that tastes of spring. That night, we sleep well underneath the high ceiling and toile bedspread of our room at the Taş.

In Turkey, the best meal of the day is breakfast. Tables groan with olives, cheeses, pastries, scrambled eggs with peppers and onions, breads, cucumbers, and at least two varieties of honey. At the Nars Ilıca, a jewel-like hotel located in the former mansion of a 19th-century pasha, a heroic breakfast is served in the intimate drawing room. A sweet farmer’s cheese arrives cloaked in a blackberry coulis. Spinach-and-feta gözleme is feathery, but I’m more absorbed by the homemade preserves of peaches from the owner’s orchards, which I eat straight from the dish and then brazenly demand more.

For our last meal, we splurge at Ferdi Baba, a new restaurant in a half-finished residential development called Port Alaçatı. Late-model Mercedes-Benzes and Lexuses jam the parking lot; inside, the tables are packed with weekending Istanbulis exuding signs of European wealth: diamond studs, a cashmere sweater knotted around the neck, the flash of an expensive watch. Alaçatı’s winemakers, olive oil makers, and tobacco farmers retreat further into the distance. Then dinner arrives: a tender octopus salad and a perfectly grilled sea bass with a smattering of herbs and slices of lemon. We tuck in, thankful that at least some things remain eternal.