Ayvalık, an authentic village of your dreams

Ayvalık, a small, summer-time authentic village is a place where all your dreams can come true, from drinking great coffee to fabulous ice cream. When Istanbul days become too much, Ayvalık is a solution to your problems In Ayvalık, you can find many artistic workshops or flea markets and therefore this place is like heaven to me. I can really lose myself in places like this; I spend hours sniffing through all the things I see in the beautiful and creative shops here.

One surprising meeting I had was with a Spanish woman called Ana Gomez de Pablos. While working for TV 8 in 2003, I interviewed a woman, Ana, who had a Spanish restaurant near the Galata Tower in Istanbul. Therefore, I was really surprised to find Ana in Ayvalık, where she has a remodeling furniture shop. Life in Istanbul was too hectic for Ana and therefore she decided to move to a quieter place somewhere in Turkey. She found Ayvalık and decided to live there. Ana either finds her materials on the streets or people give her interesting things that she uses to transform into interior decoration ornaments. Her shop is filled with mirrors, tables, chairs and pottery. All of them have a very happy and colorful-looking. As material, she uses old chests, tables, and chairs or (for me this was very interesting) material that bakeries use. “The sky is the limit” is her motto and with her creativity she can add an original and colorful touch to your house.

It was around 12 p.m. and it got too hot in the narrow streets of Ayvalık.

While I had my breakfast at the Ferahi Evler hotel, my friend Ferzan served me pişi, a specialty of the Ayvalık region. Pişi is fried dough that people eat during breakfast. We started...