Alaçatı

Alaçatı was a Greek town until the population exchanges of the 1920s, and its fabric is what survives: streets of cut-stone houses with wooden shutters painted blue and lilac, bougainvillea over the walls, cobbles, and a row of stone windmills on the ridge that once ground the district's grain. For decades it was a quiet farming and fishing town; from the 1990s the bay two kilometres south turned out to have almost ideal conditions for windsurfing - a shallow flat-water lagoon and a steady summer thermal wind - and schools, then hotels, then a boutique tourism industry followed. The old town is now a dense concentration of restored stone hotels, restaurants, cafés and design shops, extremely pretty and extremely busy in season. The Saturday market is a serious one for produce, herbs and the local gum-mastic sweets. In August it is expensive and shoulder-to-shoulder; in May and October it is very good.

What you actually see

• The stone streets - blue-shuttered houses and bougainvillea.
• The ridge windmills - the old stone mills above the town.
• The windsurf bay - the flat lagoon and its schools.
• The Saturday market - produce, herbs and mastic sweets.

When to go

May to June and September to October for the wind without the crush. July and August are packed and priced accordingly; winter is quiet and half-closed.

Honest expectations

It is thoroughly gentrified and among the most expensive small towns in Turkey in season. The old town has no beach - the bay is a couple of kilometres away and beach clubs charge entry. Parking in summer is difficult.

Nearby

Çeşme and its castle are ten minutes west; Ilıca beach and the peninsula bays are between them.