I like its people even more than the place. There is a sincerity to their friendliness, perhaps an echo of the Turkish tradition of hospitality to strangers, that I haven’t found in Greece or Italy, for example.

For instance, we ate dinner one night at a small roadside hotel on the road to Ildir from Çeşme – Albayrak Otel, I think. The food was wonderful. The service was wonderful. Even the price was fine enough. What really charmed me was that the waiter strolled about the cafe shaking and ‘bruising’ the spice plants that grow at its perimetre; the smells that drifted through the cafe were just so delightful. Perhaps I imagined it, but the food tasted better with the extra, fresh aromas. We chatted with him about this, and he responded with a big smile and later, with a free dessert.