Exploring Turkey: Çanakkale

As COVID-19 sank its teeth into Turkey, the government made a decision to move Spring Break up by three weeks, and then to move teachers and students into the realm of online learning after that. I had planned to spend my spring break within Turkey because I want to explore this beautiful country, which I call home, just as much as any other–if not more! Amazingly I was able to move all of our plans–rental car, multiple hotel reservations, and a day tour–up by exactly three weeks. Within the matter of a couple of hours, everything I had planned to do with my girlfriend in early April, we were prepared to do NOW.  And just in the nick of time–as we would soon find ourselves confined to home like the rest of the planet.

As I took you with me to Antalya before, allow me to now take you along for a road trip to Çanakkale, a province north of Izmir by about four to five hours. We picked up our rental car from the airport on a Sunday afternoon and enjoyed watching the scenery pass us by while listening to a Classic Road Trip playlist on Spotify, singing along, and telling stories that the songs jarred from our memories. Ginger and I had traveled to Antalya last school year, and to Kiev this past November, so we knew how to roll well together.

We made it into Çanakkale just after the sun went down and didn’t struggle too much to find Set Ozer Hotel, our little boutique hotel home for the next two nights. We got checked in and ventured out to share a bottle of wine and to have dinner. We went to Akava just a little ways down the street. We definitely recommend this place for it’s cocktails. More on that later! 

Monday took us on half day trips to the Ancient location of Troy in the morning, and then to the Gallipolli Peninsula (European side of Turkey) in the afternoon. Our morning tour was speedy, just Ginger, myself, and another American who had come down from Istanbul. I have not read the classic tales about Troy–so I will just say that this visit was my introduction to Troy and I fully accept that I will need to visit multiple times to grasp it all. There are something like nine levels of the city and it has not, nor has plans to be, excavated fully. It was a terribly windy day and I’ll even say COLD. We bundled up and soaked in as much info as we could. As I said, we hardly scratched the surface. 

After a brief respite in our hotel room, we were collected by a handler for the second half of the day which began with a ferry ride across the Dardanelles to the Gallipolli peninsula, the European side of Turkey. I’ll pause here to offer up my map of Turkey sites via Google maps. The blue pins are places I have been previously, the red pins are places I wish to see, and the yellow pins are the sites we visited on this road trip. As you can see, Turkey is pretty large and in my experience, for each site you visit, you add two or three or even four more.

After stopping first at Kabatepe, we visited Anzac Cove which is famous/infamous for where the Australians and New Zealanders set up camp on the peninsula during the Gallipolli campaign of WWI. Our guide for the day, Bulent, was born and raised on the peninsula, and has been giving tours for over 20 years. He was a fountain of knowledge. For me it was my first real introduction to this historic time period. I had planned to watch some movies prior to our travel, but when our spring break was moved up, I did not get that done. I have since watched “Gallipolli” with Mel Gibson; I yet plan to watch “The Water Diviner” (with Russell Crowe). I will not recount the campaign here as you can read about it in any number of places online. We visited key sites throughout the afternoon, to include: Kabatepe, Anzac Cove, a host of memorials and cemeteries, Lone Pine Cemetery, the remains of the trenches built by both sides, and the Ataturk statue at Chunuk Bair. Just as with Troy, I realized I was at the beginning of learning this information and this first visit was one of familiarization. The peninsula is beautiful and does have the Suvla winery on it. 

After our full day of ancient and modern history, we rode the ferry back across the Dardanelles and went back to Akava as our guide from the morning (Thanks, Sukru Bey!!) said it was the best place in town for cocktails, and specifically one called the “Sirius Black” as it has an ingredient that comes from ancient Ottoman times (demirhindibağı). We each enjoyed a Sirius Black with the bartender that created these drinks–imagine our fortune! We also tried the Amortantia, but then returned to Sirius Black–it had such a unique taste! After our cocktail hour we journeyed farther down the way and enjoyed a shared dinner of pizza and pasta. Sukru Bey even stopped by and found us after his tour for the day was done. He had a beer with us before we headed home to our hotel for the night. It had been a full and fun day.

After a good night’s sleep and a full breakfast we packed up the car and headed on to our next point of exploration–two nights on Bozcaada, Turkey’s wine island!! We drove the hour plus and got into Geyikli to catch the 15.00 ferry across to the island. We had some time to pass and therefore sat on the deserted beach and drank a beer with the local stray cat to keep us company.

We were aware it was off season–Bozcaada is normally busy from June to September–but we had checked daily with our hotel to be sure they would be okay to receive us. I assured them that while we were foreigners that we were not coming from abroad. We were domestic tourists! They were happy to have us and I believe we were the ONLY foreigners on the entire island across our three days/two nights there. Our hotel, the Ebruli Hotel, was lovely! We each had our own room. I had this funky bed (LOL) and two great seats by the window where we could look out over the town and the fortress on the island. 

Our time on Bozcaada was a delight. We walked the village streets and explored that first afternoon having dinner at Şehir Restaurant (translates to City Restaurant) on the harbor. We enjoyed an array of lovely mezes, calamari, and fish. We drank a bottle of wine from one of the island’s wineries. I know they were thankful for our business as it was our table and just one more (the manager from our hotel and his family or friends). 

The next morning, after breakfast at our hotel, we went on a walkabout. We explored more of the village streets which were full of boutique hotels and pansiyons. Most everything was closed down and there was much construction going on as they are preparing for the season to start. We went to the fortress to discover it was closed (thanks to COVID, we assumed). Then we hiked up and around to the hilltop where there are three windmills being constructed. It was super windy but the sun was shining and it was fun to stretch our legs and look out over the water.

For our afternoon adventure we drove around the island in search of wineries and wine. Corvus is the most famous winery on the island; there are a total of six wineries from what we could learn. Corvus was just a couple kilometers away, and closed. Neither were any of its tasting, or wine bites, sites open. But the day was sunny and bright and we were happy to be out and about. We drove along the coast line and looked down on numerous beautiful beaches and water dotted with a variety of shipping vessels. We tooled along and explored a few side roads along the way. We looked across vineyards tucked into the low areas between the hilltops.

We were on the loop back into town when we spotted the large Amadeus sign. Amadeus is the newest winery on the island, only being in business for the last 10 years. We drove up and watched a large Turkish man stop his welding which he was doing in the parking lot and walk into the building. Ginger commented that it was promising he was not chasing or shooing us away!! And glory be…we entered the winery and found that while we could not taste wine–tasting being shut down because of COVID–we could, by all means, buy wine! And so we did. We each bought an assorted case doing what we could to to support the local economy and enjoy the luxury of a vehicle of our own.

And, to be honest, I yet have almost the case of wine to share with friends….once we can NON-social distance and enjoy life again!

We enjoyed some beers in my room in the afternoon and took a little nap. In the evening we learned that more of the island, and really all of Turkey, was shutting down in reaction to the impacts of COVID-19. We touched base with our hotel for the next night and while it was willing to accept us, the ancient site of Assos was closing per the minister of culture and tourism’s guidance. We made the call and decided we would journey home to Izmir a day early. 

We caught the afternoon ferry off of Bozcaada with tears in our eyes (I mean, in all honesty, if we had rented an airBnb instead, we would have done distance learning from there!!!!) and drove the few hours home to Izmir. We stopped off at a major grocery story and stocked up to be at home, which is what we have been doing ever since. We arrived back to Izmir on March 19th. We have been doing distance learning from home for eight weeks.

I know what we did was risky to the eyes of some. We were encouraged to spend our spring break at home in Izmir. But we wanted so much to explore this grand country–to live our lives. And so we did. Thankfully,  neither of us has been unwell; we were not exposed to COVID during our travels as far as either of us can tell. After all these days at home all I can say is ,I am so grateful for the exploration we made, the time we spent, seeing corners of Turkey that we now hope to revisit. Bozcaada is a gem! 

Each and every day we saw the beauty and the humor. But we also paused to check in with one other. If, at any point, someone wanted to go home or was beyond their comfort zone, then we would go. That is friendship and trust. 

We will return…to Bozcaada, and to Akava, to the area–there is so much we did not yet see. Yes, we only began to discover this corner of Turkey. Thanks for journeying with us. Questions are welcome! Until next time, Cheers…be safe and be healthy! Love, Heather (and Ginger)