Bozcaada

Bozcaada town as seen from the Fortress

My friend Erin visited me last week and we set out to explore some places that I had never been to. One of these places was Bozcaada, a beautiful island in the Aegean sea. Bozcaada isn't a place where one "does" anything specific, it's a relaxing place where one can wander the streets, look at the colorful doors and window frames on the white washed houses and take photographs. There are also three local wine producers who make nice wines, lots of nice grapes and tomato products (tomato jam anyone?), many cute cafes and some really good food. Bozcaada townsite also has an impressive fortress which you can tour for a whopping one lira and 50 cents! It's a great place to take some photos of the town and harbor. Apparently, the side of the island opposite to the town has some nice beaches (we didn't have time to go).



Erin and I only stayed in Bozcaada for one night but I wish I had stayed a bit longer. Bozcaada is a small island, about 6 kms wide, and having a car to explore it would have been nice. As it was, we had arrived sans car and with large backpacks on our backs. It's easy to get to Bozcaada provided that you can first get to Geyikli where you catch the ferry to the island. Erin and I were staying in Ayvalik (about 3 hours away) which I had thought would provide us with a simple enough connection to Bozcaada, but I was wrong. It would have involved taking three different hot, slow moving, chicken filled buses to get to the ferry boat and neither Erin nor I was interested in that kind of adventure (we are no longer spry, patient 20 year olds). Instead, we found a Turkish tour company taking Turks on a day trip from Ayvalik to Bozcaada. We craftily booked ourselves on to the tour, negotiating a reduced rate since we were only going one way, and arrived in Bozcaada in style with our own comfortable air conditioned bus. The tour guide was very friendly and even had the tour bus driver drop us right at our hotel which was located a ways out of town. He did, however, first force us to endure a Turkish language tour of a winery where Erin befriended a German speaking Turk who translated the Turkish to German which she then translated to English for my benefit! In all, it was a very successful way of getting to Bozcaada.

A beautiful door in Bozcaada

The hotel we stayed in is called the "Uzum Butik Otel" (http://www.tenedosbozcaada.com). We had a big and comfortable room with a sea view and a nice sea breeze coming in the (screened! A rarity in Turkey!) windows and our bathroom was HUGE and included a jacuzzi tub (not very useful during high summer though!). There is a great garden where they grow tomatoes, eggplant, peppers and spices and for lunch they made us a fantastic menemen (Turkish omelet) using these fresh vegetables. Breakfast was great with lots of nice jams to choose from, fresh veggies, cheeses etc. The hotel owners were really nice, especially Elif, who answered all our questions and drove us in to town. Uzum Otel is not located right in the Bozcaada townsite so it's either a long hot walk to reach it or a taxi. The taxi ride is about 11 lira. The hotel is located close to a small beach and it's a great, quiet place to stay!

This is the view from the Uzum Otel