Şirince is a hillside village thirty kilometres inland from the Kuşadası cruise port and seven kilometres up from the Ephesus archaeological site. It was settled by freed Greek farmers in the fifteenth century, who deliberately called it Çirkince, "the ugly one", to keep tax collectors and bandits away. The name was changed to Şirince ("the lovely one") in 1926. Apart from the name, very little has changed.
Stone houses on a single south-facing slope, narrow lanes, an Ottoman-era church (now a museum), six family fruit-wine cellars open for tasting, half a dozen garden restaurants serving Aegean meze and slow-cooked lamb, weavers selling cotton scarves and tablecloths, and a wood-fired bakery where village women make gözleme to order. That is the whole village, and it takes most guests two to four hours to walk it at the right pace.
For cruise guests Şirince makes sense as a long-lunch destination rather than a quick stop. The fruit wine takes time, the Aegean lunch takes time, and rushing it is missing the point. We pair it most often with a quiet morning at the Temple of Artemis or the House of the Virgin Mary, then a long afternoon in the village, then back to the port with an hour to spare.
