Eat Well

Village breakfast in Cumalıkızık

A 700-year-old Ottoman village on the mountain's foot — cobbled lanes, timber houses, and the longest breakfast of your week.

₺₺half a daya weekday morning — weekends are a crush

Save for later — join Smileys

Why do it?

Cumalıkızık was one of the first villages the early Ottomans settled on the slopes of Uludağ, and seven centuries later it still has its shape: steep cobbled lanes, timber-and-plaster houses in ochre and blue with overhanging upper floors, and a village square under trees. It is on the UNESCO list with Bursa's old center for exactly that reason. The way the village lives now is breakfast — courtyards and house-gardens serving the whole spread, homemade jams, village bread, gözleme off the griddle, honey from the mountain — and it's a twenty-minute drive from the city.

The Smileys Take

Go on a weekday and go early: on a weekend afternoon the lanes are shoulder to shoulder and the food gets rushed. Pick a courtyard place rather than one on the main lane, order the full village spread for the table (it's a shared meal — the whole point), and then walk the upper lanes, which most people never reach. This is our standard 'welcome to Bursa' morning for a new group: unhurried, cheap for what it is, and everyone leaves full and friends.