Last Day in Cappadocia

EDIT: Because the pictures seem to mess with the CSS, I've moved them to below the text.

So the thing to do in Cappadocia is take a hot air balloon ride. However, said hot air balloon ride costs 150-175 Euros. EUROS. That is a lot of money and considering the student status of my sister and I and my only semi-conquered fear of heights we decided to climb to the top of a ridge and watch the hot air balloons instead. This required waking up at 5:30 am but was completely worth it. Bleary-eyed as we were after a hike to the top of the ridge near our hotel it was so amazing to watch tons and tons of balloons floating through the air, and I love the sound that the flames make. I honestly think it was more fun to watch them from our vantage then if we were (gulp) high up in one.

We slept for a few more hours and then again enjoyed our stunning view form breakfast. I am planning a post all about food (since it is a HUGE part of our travels) but a quick note on Turkish breakfast. It usually involves bread with many jams (sour cherry being the specialty of the country), the Turkish version of a quesadilla (with many possible fillings) and cheese, tomatoes, olives, cucumber, etc. and of course, Turkish tea and coffee.

We decided to take a quick morning hike to the ‘love valley’ also known as Freud’s valley….let’s just say the rock formations here are quite…phallic looking. We headed out with the rudimentary map that they provide in the town with the knowledge that Elizabeth had hiked there before. Long, long, long story short we never made it to the love valley. We had a spectacular 3 hour-ish hike, during which we saw no one else (except for one lost-looking couple about 30 minutes in). We tried in vain to orient ourselves with the aforementioned ridiculous ‘map’ and also climbed a couple of peaks to get our bearings (but it turns out other peaks were blocking the uber-important landmarks). Considering that most of our trip had been spent walking long distances and specifically doing some good hiking in Cappadocia we were getting quite tired toward the end and when we crested a peak and saw a farmer and his tractor I was overjoyed. Of course after 3 more minutes walking towards the farmer we spied the all important landmark and found our own way back easily.

We decided that we deserved some beers at that point and headed down into town towards Fat Boys bar (a bar owned by a married Australian and Turkish couple). On the way there we heard a ridiculous sounding ‘hee-haw’…I kid you not and spied an ADORABLE baby donkey tied up around the corner. Here’s a video which does him better justice then words.

The beers were a wonderful refreshment and we even had passable nachos, burger and fries and a salad (basically our first non-Turkish food in the trip). After lunch we split up and Elizabeth went on another hike while Sam and I decided to see the sites while resting our weary feet in this bad boy:

After another afternoon storm that ‘forced’ Sam and I back to the bar for more beers and caught Elizabeth in the wide open (some drenching may have occurred), we got cleaned up at the hotel and hopped on a bus to the airport for our flight back to Istanbul. It was a long night of travel but we made it safe and sound at a late hour back to Elizabeth’s apartment.

We are still alive, but quite busy

Only one more day!! :(

As we have the aforementioned one day left I do not have much time to update the blog-ster. However I am planning to write the posts while on various planes tomorrow and post 'em up while chilling on layovers.

Mini outlines to pique your interest and stimulate my memory!

Cappadocia day 3

• 5:30am wake up to watch hot air balloons - awesome
• The hike that never ends - although it did eventually....I have never been so happy to see a man with a tractor.
• Well deserved beers at the Australian bar...and passable nachos!
• ATV excursion - we were too tired to hike more after the morning march but still were unable to find the area which was the goal of the long hike.
• More beers after giving up :)
• Rainstorm of epic proportions (Eliz was caught in this as she still had the strength to hike at this point)
• Bus ride + flight + bus ride = HOME!

Day before yesterday (first day back in Istanbul):

• Istanbul Archeology museum - best 10L spent here
• Shopping in the Bazaar (get excited, people)
• European/modern area of Istanbul - Jeans in the power color!! (will explain later)
• Meyhane dinner

Yesterday

• Amazing brunch (but man did we have to work for it)
• Ferry boat ride to Prince Islands
• Horse buggy ride/1,000 year old monestary/horsebuggy ride
• Beers/puppy
• Iskandar (brown butter heaven)

Outro!

Cappadocia Day 2

Yes as the husband said, I have been slacking. But hey, if you were in Cappadocia you would not be wasting any time in front of a computer either. We are back in Istanbul now so I will try to do slight justice to Cappadocia which really is the coolest place I have ever been.

The first pleasant surprise on our first full day was the view with our hotel breakfast:

Eh, this will do for breakfast

We chose our hotel for its relatively good prices, cave rooms (which were a must) and altitude since it is one of the highest up in Goreme and we were rewarded with an amazing view. We headed down into town after breakfast to find our new BFF, the Fiat.

Fi-Fi, the Fiat

Sam was OVERJOYED to drive a manual again. It convinced me that I do indeed need to relent and let him get another car....for his 30th birthday. (He is pushing for his 29th...oh lord). We hopped in the car with a fairly untrustworthy map and headed towards an old Greek town. The Greeks were moved out of Turkey in a population exchange in 1923 following the Greco-Turkish war and it was interesting to see the church and remains of the old town.

Lighting Candles in the Greek Church for loved ones

Next we headed up to a canyon that had lots of the hidden churches carved into the cave formations. I think this was my favorite part of the day because it was so out of the way (and quite a hike) that there was basically no one else there, only one other couple in one of the churches.

Sam and Elizabeth stoked on the cave church

Next we drove over to an underground city. There are TONS of them in Cappadocia and the people that lived there would get word that the Ottomans were invading/raiding yet again and they would just go down into their underground city and live there for months. Like 10,000 people. It was insane. they disguised vents as wells and the invaders were non the wiser.

Stone door. Get through this, invaders.

Looking up the well/vent

After our underground adventure I had a popsicle that was delicious. Just thought you should know. After that we drove to the Ilhara valley to climb down and hike through the valley which again had some incredible cave churches.

Valley behind us. We climbed all the way down through the valley and back up. Oy.

Whoo! made it back up (it was in the mid 90s folks, this was an achievement). And a note on the hat: no, I do not think I am a cowgirl (I wish) however this 5 Lira hat kept the sun off my face and has a special place in my heart for that service.

Next we visited an awesome caravan stop from WAY back when (pre-Ottoman empire). And then had an awesome dinner, but I gotta get out of here for more adventures so I will leave you with one more pic and then attempt to update on yesterday tomorrow. Got that? Me neither.

Sam in the Caravan stop

Random Musings

Although I should be updating you all on the ridiculous amazing-ness that was Cappadocia, I would rather spill some random thoughts I have been having about traveling here.

Things I miss about the US:

• Free bathrooms. It costs $ to go to the bathroom most places here and they do not always have European toilets. Not a huge deal but it makes me appreciate the free, clean restrooms we have all over in America.
• Ice. They don't really serve drinks with ice here and I am an ice and straw girl.
• Iced tea - they serve it hot here. Even though it's like 90 degrees :(
• ATHENA. Athena. Athena. Athena. I want to love on every dog I see here but due to their cleanliness issues I can't.....much. But the pup is enjoying summer camp with Grandma and Grandpa Hendricks and I get to see her in less then one week!!

Things I will miss when I leave Turkey:

• The sister. If it's possible I think I forget how much I always miss her until I visit/she visits and then it's sort of a gut punch of sucky-ness that she lives so far away. Consolation: I get to visit her in amazing places like Turkey.
• The hot tea. Yes I miss my iced tea, however I LOVE good black tea. And they make it my way here. They brew it super dark (but not burned - yes, you can burn tea) and pour 1/3 of the tea in your glass, then top it off with hot water. The glasses are also Emily sized, meaning adorably small (Sam's words), and they love it sweet and serve every mini glass with two sugar cubes.
• The kittens. See previous blog posts.
• Good, cheap, easy public transit. Really US? Get it together. I love that you use the same card here to pay for buses, subway, light rail, ferries, etc.
• The food and the fact that it's EVERYWHERE. You can never be hungry here. Food on the streets, on the ferries, etc. I literally think you would be hard pressed in Istanbul to find somewhere you have to walk more then one block for food. And we have been taking advantage. Juice stands, ice cream (non-dairy flavors for me - score!), fresh string cheese from the markets, bread, nuts, fruit. Omg it's so good.

Twas a Dark and Stormy Night

Sam here again, the sisters are awake this time, but I've been given blogging controls by the wife. There's not much time to blog here in Cappadocia. Much more time to take pictures, though.

This will just be a quick update with a video, but I promise I'll make Emily do a proper blog update tomorrow. She's been slacking.

This is what we woke up to this morning, over our cave:

Cappadoia Part Uno

Sam here, the Sister's are asleep so I am taking over.

Cappadocia has some of the most interesting and beautiful landscapes I've ever seen. The Anatolian Christians had a history of carving homes, businesses and churches out of the volcanic bedrock. Some of the communities have been around for over a thousand years. Even our hotel is build into a cave, which provides unusual lodging and also surprisingly sub-ambient temperatures even when it's hot outside. Our first day (warning, runon sentence) here consisted of an early morning plane flight, a harrowing 150km/h shuttle ride, 1km hike to a UNESCO Open Air Museum, Freak Rain/Hailstorm, awesome dinner (should expound upon this later), break in formerly mentioned rain/hailstorm, hike up to hilltop overlooking the town we're staying in (pics later), lightning storm while we were exposed on hilltop, hike back down and then back up hills (many hills here) to our cave hotel. THIS WAS ONLY IN OUR FIRST 8 HOURS. Much more to come. So many pictures. Come back soon.



The views here are incredible.

Frescoes in cave churches.

This was a Nunnery, apparently.

Not many of the carved out caves have this kind of head room.

Human-sized anthills.

Not all of the cave churches have detailed frescoes.

Day 5 - Downtime and a Boat Ride

To those of you who have been reading since the beginning I just updated all the old posts with pics, enjoy!

We have been relaxing at home today (hence the time to blog) and will be going on a boat trip up the Bosporus this evening. Sunset pics - yes! Then on to Cappadoccia tomorrow :)