18/08/2026
Turkey ran on the same thing from the first night to the last.
Beşiktaş, after the fish market had closed. We found Olta Balık on a back street — small, tucked in, everything off that day's catch from the market that had just shut. The second night we tried one of the big places, and left after the appetizer to go back to Olta Balık. It was that good.
There was a violin and a kanun working the street between the tables, and people at those tables singing along without being asked to. That kept happening. Musicians at nearly every restaurant, locals joining in, everyone facing each other. Nobody was looking at anything but the person across the table.
The lesson arrived the whole way down the coast: find the small place the Turks are eating in, not the big one with the view to sell.
On the last day we came down off the mountain road out of Assos in close to a hundred degrees and stopped at Sütüven Şelalesi. Cooling down in the water below the falls was everything.
Then Cunda. Cobblestone the whole way through, quiet in the afternoon, and then the island wakes up. We ended in a courtyard with walls and no roof, lanterns in the tree, a band playing Greek and Turkish music. It could have been a scene out of Zorba.
Cunda was Greek until 1923. The music is not a coincidence.
Then we did the arithmetic wrong, rebooked through Nairobi, and drove straight into Friday afternoon traffic in Istanbul. Still like trying to fly in a flock of birds — no one signals, everyone adjusts, and you move with it or you don't move.
Never stop wandering.
— GB and Ivy
Photos from our last days in Turkey.
