Vahap Özaltay Meydanı

I took my time this morning having breakfast with eggs and fresh bread that the family put out for me. They've gone to work already in the morning but I said goodbye to them in the evening before. Before leaving, I played with the little kittens outside in the garden for some time, they're absolutely gorgeous and I hope they will be taken care of well.
The ride to Izmir was pretty relaxed, only about 20km, all flat along the seaside on a cycling road, just perfect. :)
My couchsurfing host David was available from 3pm on, so I had some time left in the city before heading to his place and gotten a little hungry. So I searched for a nice Pide place and started walking towards it. I soon realized, that it is located right in the middle of the big and busy bazaar in Izmir. 😅 It was already too late to turn back, I was pushing my bicycle through crowds of people, I then arrived at the Pide place where I immediately was approached by a Turkish family eating there. They were amazing, keeping an eye on my bike and stuff parked around the corner, offered me to try all their food on the table, and even offered me to stay at their place if I want. Such nice people here, I cannot put it in words. :)
Around 3:30pm I arrived at David's place, we managed to get my bike and bags into his appartment in which he just moved in, and had a coffee together. :) From the moment I arrived at his place he made me feel like home and we got along really well, felt like an old friend I've known for a long time. In the evening we took some beers and went out to a square on the seaside, from which you can see an amazing sunset and met up with some Turkish and international friends of him. They were super nice and we had a fun time in a bar and a delicious vegan restaurant after. 😊 We were heading back home around 11pm since he had to work the next day, I was pretty tired, too actually. Just outside his building, we found a huge and beautiful junk of tree, that David has been walking past for the last few days thinking he could make something nice for his apartment out of it, like a lamp. Having had some drinks, I was pretty conviced the two of us can manage get this at least 3m long piece of wood up the stairway to the sixth floor. 😂 So we tried, but already at the front door another guy had to help us to get it through. 😅 We managed to get it almost up the first floor, but there was no room for turning the corners. So eventually we gave up and brought it back out onto the street - again the guy had to help us. 😂 We placed it on the side of a construction site, thinking nobody would touch it there and that we'll get a saw tomorrow to cut it into smaller pieces. Still laughing about it I eventually fell asleep. 😅

The next morning, I was woken up by the noise of the construction site and saw from the balcony, that the branch of the tree is gone. 🥴 When I went downstairs, I asked a construction worker about it via google translater, he went to the guy in the digger to ask and came back with the news that it was been smashed - such a shame.. :/
A little sad about it still, I went to explore Izmir inner city by foot for some hours. At first I searched for some street art graffity, particularly a certain one with a girl with a bicycle from a Serbian artist. I found many other ones through google maps, but not this one. So I asked a group of younger people on a break from working at Pizza Hut whether they know where it is. 😅 One guy immediately took my phone, went into Google Street view and "walked" the streets of Izmir. After minutes he gave it back to me, having found the location of the street art. 😄 It was really funny, we talked a little and I then went off to the location of the graffity I was looking for. After that, I strolled around the old Bazaar (much easier without bicycle), had some really nife food there from some sort of a cafeteria, and went up an old castle called Kadifekale. The previous evening, David told me about a neighborhood that is considered not to be the safest at night, but I forgot the name of it. While walking up the hill to the castle, I kind of felt like I've ended up in this specific neighbourhood, which David later confirmed. It was a lot less developed than the neighborhoods close to the seaside, lots of men were sitting outside on the street who seemed a little confused about me walking around there, very young kids were playing by themselves on the stairs not being supervised at all, and all kinds of animals were running around in the streets. I did not feel uncomfortable, but I was certainly drawing unwanted attention towards me. 🙈 On my way down from the castle (the views were nice, lots of begging kids up there though which I find really hard to deal with), I was approached by a few men asking for my number, which I politely declined.
I got a little exhausted and hungry after being back in the city center, also David was off from work soon, too. Once we met at home we went for groceries and cooked Mantı and some Lebanese dish I learned from my host in Kuşadası together. It was delicious but also very rich in garlic. :D After being out all day we both wanted to stay in and enjoyed some nice conversation and shared some stories. It was a nice relaxing evening. :)

I will post some more pictures of Izmir in the next footprint. :)Read more