Turkey - Traditional Alaçatı and its thousand cats

Alaçatı is one of Turkey's most traditional towns, with stone houses, narrow streets, boutique hotels and restaurants with tables on the street. And just a stone's throw away from Çeşme.

We spend another cosy evening in Çeşme, Christmas Eve. We indulge in the best cuisine and excellent service at the Swissotel (sometimes we really are little luxury mice) and simply remember all the things we are grateful for in 2023. A lovely evening, albeit without any Christmas flair. But somehow still festive.

We also spend the morning in the bar with a sea view at the Swissotel. (We simply stand right next to the hotel on the beach with our Felix, very pleasant in the low season) The only strange thing is that we are again the only guests. We enquire: The hotel only opened 4 weeks ago and only 10 rooms are rented out. We sink into deep lounge chairs, read to each other from our new book "About life and other impositions" before. This is what Christmas can be like: peace, togetherness and good food.

We spend the evening in the aforementioned Alaçatı. The street cafés are pretty, but mostly empty. Gerd is a little annoyed that he left the cat food in the car. Because Alaçatı seems to be the city of cats.

As a consolation, he finally gets his mantı for dinner. But they taste completely different to how he remembers them from Bandirma - over two years ago. Yes, that can happen.

As the little town (or is it just a village?) probably shows more of its beauty during the day, we visit it again the next morning. Well prepared with a bag of cat food, we stroll through the alleyways, have "a little something" for breakfast and say goodbye to this beautiful area with a heavy heart.

The route takes us along the coast towards Selçuk. In between, we take a break in small tea rooms, continue reading in our little book and find a dream spot in a rather touristy village high above Selçuk.

---

Merci for "travelling with us

We are thinking about taking another break from travelling in the summer and visiting our families in Germany and Switzerland. One of the ideas is to organise a Lecture about our long journey to the Persian Gulf to prepare. If you would like to, what would interest you the most? We will also tell stories here that don't find a place here on the blog. We're thinking of the Bern and Berlin area - simply because we have family there. But other places are also conceivable. Feel free to write to us.

Do you think our travel experiences might be of interest to others? Then you can share the Share post quietly. By e-mail or however you want to do it.

In addition, if you haven't already done so, you can use our Newsletter subscribe. Here you will receive all our experiences in your mailbox whenever we publish something new or once a week on Fridays: live-pur.ch/newsletter

We are also very happy to hear your views, your tips or your questions. Just comment on the post!