Cappadocia - Sunday 23 May
We survived the 10hr bus journey from Antalya up to Nevsehir and hopped onto another shuttle bus to get us into Goreme, the town we'd be based at for the next 3 days in Cappadocia.
Awoken by the Cappadocian sunrise at 5am from my coach seat.
I regret not taking pictures at the Goreme bus station when we first arrived, which i remember to be rather nice. We had some helpful guy call up our hotel and before long, Hasan, our hotel owner came in his car to pick us up!
Breakfast at Canyon View Hotel cos our room will only be ready at 10am.
These are just living spaces from the entrance to the reception and i am in love with our hotel already. Hasan, the hotel owner said he's giving us the Honeymoon Cave Suite (Room No. 6) and i nearly squealed when i saw the inside. Favourite hotel room of all time. Quaint + charming + contextural = my favourite mix. Pardon the numerous photos that follow. I might as well take 360 deg panoramic video next time.
I almost didn't want to leave the room.
Our hotel owner and guide for half day today drove to one of the highest points in Cappadocia (i think this was in Uchishar but i'm not so sure) to get a good view of the rock formations.
Onto Rose Valley which was called Rose Valley cos of its pinkish colour. At this point i am looking at this huge slab of horizontal rock and i don't know why but i'm thinking about Ayers Rock which then leads me to think of Cradle Mountain in Tasmania and how mountains are kinda named after how they look or how man perceived they looked, like say Three Sisters in Katoomba, Blue Mountains, best viewed from Echo Point. That one even has a story behind them, something about the sisters being turned into stone for falling in love with men. In the midst of my reverie, i catch myself looking around to find another seemingly massive piece of rock formation to see whether if i were to give it some fanciful name, i'd buy into it being some form of tourist attraction. Then i look back at Rose Valley in front of me and i squint to try and see if i can differentiate it from the other piece of rock i'd just given an imaginary name and what do you know, they look the same!
Stopped for tea at this make-shift tea-shack and i felt like i had just gotten off a camel's back in the desert or in some scene out of one of the indiana jones series. Pretty cool huh.
Fairy chimneys! Okay i totally got this off wikipedia cos i'm a little bit brain-dead to try and recall what our guide, Hasan said or to attempt to digest and paraphrase: Fairy chimneys are formed where a small cap or boulder of the original basalt remains, and protects a cone of tuff beneath it from erosion. Eventually, the tuff will be undercut to the extent that the cap falls off, and the remaining cone is then quickly eroded. I do recall Hasan saying about fairy chimneys being essentially sedimentary rock covered with a layer of basalt.
Lunch at Sultan's, opposite the Goreme Bus Station, where we had to move downstairs and inside cos the wind was blowing the table runner off the table and our hair into our faces.
Hasan, giving us the run down on carpet making and patterns. It's incredile the womenfolk can spend up to 6 months weaving one intricately designed carpet. Extreme patience! So much hard work! I felt a bit sorry i wasn't buying any back.
Teik and me disagreed on whether this should have been a portrait or landscape composition. I say landscape!
We are now at the Goreme Open-air Museum in Cappadocia. Several of these cave dwellings used to be churches carved into caves and you could still see frescoes in some of the better preserved ones.
Dinner round the corner at the foot of the uphill climb to our hotel.
Cappadocia - Monday 24 May
Day of hot air balloon ride, yippee!
View from just outside our cave room doors.
Sunrise!
At approximately 5.30am, the hot air balloon company picks us up from our hotel and makes a couple of stops along the way picking up more hot air ballooners. We get to the site and there's a kind of rush, balloon operators in walktie-talkie frenzy, tourists making payment, biscuits being poured onto a platter but we didn't know if we were supposed to take one, and most of all, the looks of excitement on all our faces.
Absolutely...
...breathtaking! And magical.
If we kinda look fat here, it's cos we piled on 4 tops and 2 pairs of jeans each, fearing it would be freezing this early in the morning. It turned out to be alright.
Balloon in process of deflating... gua gua gua...
Back in time for breakfast but fei mao over here beat us to it.
Looks like fei mao is not interested in bread.
fei mao spies the enemy on the prowl...
but the enemy is fei mao himself... wha...
the enemy launches a domineering forward paw. or is this fei mao? i think i've just managed to confuse myself.
oops cheryl's here. never mind the cats for now, let's just have breakfast and enjoy the view.
Hasan's splendid eggs. We sent Teik to the kitchen to spy for the recipe since he's been talking about learnng how to cook eggs. for. the. longest. time.
Breakfast should be like this everyday... then again, means need to wake up early to prepare... guess you can't have your egg and eat it!
don't think he succeeded much with the spying.
oh look who's reappeared!
it's fei mao! no. it's the enemy cat. um wait i think it's fei mao.
fei mao launching a brazen attempt at attacking my leftover cheese.
Gasp! Didn't your mommy teach you it's rude to put your legs on the dining table?
I was being entertained by LongWhiskers over here after my travel companions had retreated to the room after breakfast.
Ihlara Valley Trek, except that it wasn't really a trek since there were steps leading all the way down to the river.
So relaxing and nice right? Of course nice la, you aren't the one having to climb all the way down and up again later. Just look at pictures in the comfort of your air-con room, of course relaxing ;p
Now, do you call this a brook or a creek? Can someone tell me what's the difference?
pant pant...
Looking down Ihlara Valley
Hasan took us to this lake - i think it was called Krater Lake or smtg. Reminded me of the lake in front of Cradle Mountain in Tasmania. So still and calming.
There's just something about the vastness of land surrounding you.
Our efficient mode of transport. What did you think? Camel-back meh?
Derinkuyu Underground City - eight freaking floors of subterranean living. One kind of amazing architecture. There's even a school on the 5th floor. Ok i lied. I have no idea what floor it was on. Hasan showed us the pits where food could be stored, the air shaft the permeates all the floors for ventilation, the broken hooks from which they tied their animals... as he spoke of them, our minds can't help picturing a whole community living and interacting down here.
One stretch of the way you had to bend over almost 90 deg to get through the passage. i don't know how Teik did it.
Hasan dropped us off at Zelve Valley and we explored the area for about an hour or so.
The floating fairy, or jumping gnome like she prefers. But i still think floating fairy. Gnomes can't jump this gracefully.
Turkish ice-cream to cool off in the sweltering afternoon heat. Total rip-off at 5TL per scoop.
A pair of cute dogs were playing roughly with each other.
Even the colour of the bag of chips had to match the den.
Canyon View Hotel - highly recommended! Call Hasan at 00 90 0 384 271 2333 to make a booking now.
Actually i wasn't sure if this was still part of Canyon View or we'd unwittingly wandered into the neighbour's place.
Dinner at Orient, recommended by Hasan who said he owner was his friend and we could just let the owner know and he'd give us a ride back to the hotel. We decided to walk despite the cold cos we were too full from the yummy dinner.
Cappadocia - 25 May
One of the things i wanted to do other than to take the hot air balloon ride was to watch the hot air balloons rise in the distance. Well, it wasn't quite like what i'd hoped for where i could like, you k,now be on my bed, turn around and find myself facing the roof terrace and it's like voila, amazing view of the hot air balloons dotting the sky the minute i open my eyes from slumber. Okay, sometimes i dream too much.
Isn't this amazing? The glow of sunrise hitting the terraced dwellings of Goreme at 6.30am? I woke up early to see this and it was totally worth every unrepaired cell in my body. The sun rises very quickly here, blink and you may miss it.
That empty chair is where i was sitting on to watch the sunrise.
With my feet propped up like this.
Priceless.
Teik called out and said, Su Leng, you must see this. And i thought to myself, surely not la, did a huge hot air balloon really rise just outside our bedroom window like he was joking before we came on this trip? Turns out a kitty kat had plonked its cute little butt outside our window just in time for me to take a picture. So cute.
Nice views from all our windows, cat or no cat.
Ali Baba's wife getting ready to open sesame. Okay that sounded kinda weird.
Enjoyed breakfasts at the terrace very very very much.
Tomcat on the right was being spurned repeatedly by Princess on the left.
Princess playing hard to get.
Yikes! It's not Princess. It's FEI MAO!
I don't know who this is anymore.
Find Teik.
Kelebek, top rated on TripAdvisor was next to us. But i'd still choose Canyon View.
That's Hasan, our friendly hotel owner and guide.
next: Istanbul
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