Aegean Sea 🏖 Ceșme- Alaçatı

monuments 🏛

The best thing for me when traveling is arriving in one place and finding more than expected. This was the case of Ceșme, where to my surprise I did not found only resorts and beaches (thanks God!) but also some places to explore. The biggest and the most important monument is the castle which can be visited for free with a museum card and it will take you about one hour to visit it. Super big and with lots of stairs to climb, the citadel offers beautiful panoramic views which are worth some photos and gives a glance in what the city used to look like when it was more of a port than a touristic destination.

Culinary experience 🍽

The streets of the area not only look good, but also host restaurants with very delicious dishes (traditional or not) and pubs. As this is a very popular and quite fancy place for vacations, expect the prices to be way higher than in other parts of Turkey. Normally the food prices are lower than in Europe everywhere, but here I saw even menus with higher prices. 🤑

A must try from a personal perspective is the fistikli dondurma (pistachio ice cream) from the special sweet shops. Even if I lived in Turkey for a while and tasted many flavours, this was my favorite by far! 🍦

The beach 🏊🏼 

For relaxing we choose a small and quite beach away from the crowded places located in the end of the port area (Ceșme). Yet, in other circumstances (without CORONA) I would have choosen other beaches like: Ilica, Madeo, Spiaggia or in the water sports part. Most of these are in Alaçatı side being famous for their clean blue water and more luxorious services. 🍸 For a more unique experience and a dreamy vacation you can also check Bodrum, Marmaris or Iztuzu beaches which were recommended to me by Turkish friends, but unfortunatelly I didn’t have the time to go there myself.

activities 🏄🏼‍♀️

As people choose to come here either as tourists who want to relax or as travelers hungry to explore, the area offers planty of options for spending the spare time – no wonder why they say “The most beautiful dreams come true in Ceșme”🏝 The walks in these places are a pleasure when you see vivid colors, flowers and hear music all around. We got so much energy even during pandemic when there were plenty of restrictions, imagine how full of life is this place in normal times! Statues, old walls and other figures reminded us every step about the culture & past of the surroundings, while in the harbour we observed various services such us boat trips, water sports, floating restaurants or fishing, all next to seafront parks. ⛵️