Canakkale, Turkey

The bus dropped us off right at the port and we thought we’d have to take a shuttle into the center of town… after many confusing conversations with the locals we finally figured out that we were already in the center of town! Turns out that Canakkale is a very small town with a beautiful promenade along the water; we only had to walk 50m to meet up with Emre for a monster sized baked potato (kumpir)… this kumpir bar was similar to a frozen yogurt bar in that there were over 15 different toppings to select from!


We continued sampling new Turkish foods first with some traditional ice cream (dondurma) before heading out for some Efes beers and live music. The best part of the evening must have been eating a hand rolled Tuni afterwards, which kinda felt like hitting up a late night taco truck.

After a Turkish coffee making lesson, we headed to the beach. Although the water was pretty refreshing, the two beaches we went to weren’t nearly as impressive as the one we had been to on the Black Sea, so we headed off in search of a place for some lunch. Strolling through the quiet streets, we found a nice alley filled with old men having chai… we stopped in front of a café that had grapevines growing over the top and were pleasantly surprised with a kind man from the shop across the street who came over and asked if we needed any help. The restaurant owner was his friend, who didn’t speak any English, so he helped us order some kofte and taziki.

The most popular tourist site close to Canakkale is Troy, home of the Trojan Horse. Lucky for us there is a replica of the horse in Canakkale that is rumored to have been used in the movie ‘Troy,’ so we decided to stay in town and selected some ‘Trojan wine’ to go with the experience.

Now feeling a bit warrior like, Kevin and Emre took on some 16 year olds for some 3 on 3 basketball. For the next two hours, Kevin and Emre took on the heckling kids who couldn’t figure out a combination to beat the old guys… to celebrate our victory Emre took us to the best place in town for Turkish cheesecake (which by the way needs a new translation because it does not resemble American cheesecake at all)! We were very impressed with how many new local delights we sampled in such a small town… our favorite being a sweet sesame covered roll twisted into a bagel shaped pastry that were sold all over town! There were even ones filled with olives…