I

Clock Tower (from Encyclopedi Britanica)

Izmir was a surprising pleasure. Most tourists give it a miss because it doesn't have a great beach. But it has a great history. Until the 1920s and the Turkish-Greek civil war it was a Greek city, Smyrna. And that was for more than 2,500 years. True, the sites don't match Ephesus or Pergamon, but they are well worth a visit. We saw the old market place, the citadel, and two good museums. On top of this the site is magnificent. We liked walking around the old souk and eating there. Speaking of eating, we found a working-man's cafeteria that had absolutely terrific genuine Turkish food.

Our introduction to the City, or really Gerry's, began at the train station. It sits at the end of a mile-long avenue leading away from the Corniche, or pedestrian waterfront. In the old days, before automobiles and bus transport, it was an important place. Today there is some activity, but not nearly as much as we later experienced at the giant bus station that sits far out in the new suburbs. We had come that morning the relatively short distance of 70+ kilometers from Selçuk and had selected the train partly for novelty and mostly because our hotel was closer to the Selçuk train station than bus station. And it was cheaper.

We wanted a waterfront hotel if possible, so Gerry set off for the Corniche to see what was there. We had no written information to go on, as although we'd been in Turkey a month we hadn't yet found anybody who would sell us a Lonely Planet and its prized list of recommended hotels (a couple of days later, we bought our copy in Izmir). At the Corniche Gerry found lots of apartment buildings with good Bay views but only one open hotel and it was overpriced and over dumpy. Going through the Konak along the main boulevard he'd found some candidates and now, the waterfront being out, he chose one. Back the four blocks to the station to get Jan and luggage, and then back to the chosen hotel. Whoops! We went into the wrong one because two hotels side by side have the same name.

The Gulf of Izmir is roughtly "L" or boot-shaped, with the vertical being about 40 km by 20 km and the horizontal or toe being about being about another 20 km by 5. Sitting right under the middle toe is Izmir. Or at least the center of old Izmir-Smyrna, because the growth of the city to its current 2.5 million has added suburbs and more suburbs to where they now strech around the bay and miles in land.

For our first excursion, that afternoon, we decided to take a ferry from central Izmir to Karshiyaka, which lies north-west across the bay. Most of our fellow passengers were blase commuters; we watched with interest as the ferry made its 45-minute trip, getting views of a very pretty gulf. After a short time ashore (it beginning to be late in the day) we took a different route sort of back to central Izmir. We got off a mile up the Corniche and walked back through the pleasant waterfront park. Then we got dinner in a sort of souk and headed for our hotel.

Over the next two days we explored the city afoot. Twice we went to the museum district, once to see the Archeological Museum and once to the adjacent Ethnological Museum. The latter has a lot of great carpets and kilims. It also has a lot of chauvinistic stuff, apparently of most interest to the school classes in attendance. After the visit to the Ethnological Museum we took a bus further up the hill to a park and fort that sits about 300 feet higher than the city. That gave us some pleasant views of the city but the archeological remains are bare.

In our second day walking about here we found some wonderful carpet shops, each with a wonderful selection. Geared more to the wholesale than retail market, the sales pitch is much less pressured — so much so that in one shop the saleman wasn't sure he wanted to sell to us. Minds made up, the next day we came back, to buy. Sadly for us, we don't have a house in which to lay the kind of carpet that we really would like to buy, but we did find a nice small rug for that special gift. Shipping it was a little more difficult, but that story occurred in another place.