On June 5, we headed out of Kusadasi, back to the Izmir airport to catch our flight to Istanbul and then our flight to Keyseri. Both flights were about an hour long, but we had a long layover in Istanbul.
At the Istanbul airport, we entertained ourselves with rice pudding, coffee, and shopping: (We have a separate Turkish Food post coming up later).
By the time we arrived in Keyseri, it was about 9 pm, and we still had an hour drive to Cappadocia / Goreme to our cave hotel! *sigh* It was a bit scary (at least for me) b/c it was dark and we couldn't really read any road signs. But with the really great directions from our rental car person, Russ' excellent driving skills in the Turkish countryside, we made it safely to Goreme and our cave hotel. =)
Once there, we were greeted by other ppl staying at the cave hotel and by the cave hotel owner, Faruk! Everyone was speaking English and having an excellent time just hanging out, even though it was 11pm! It was totally amazing to be greeted by such a warm group of ppl!
Here's us getting off the airplane in Keyseri (before dark):
And our Cave Hotel:
Our Cave Hotel even gave us a free Turkish breakfast every morning! It was awesome! They even had honeycomb there. We would cut off a large piece and spread it all over our bread! yummy!
Here's the view from our breakfast terrace:
On our first day, we went to the Goreme Open Air Museum. I thought the museum had something to do with airplanes or something (b/c it was called the "Open Air Museum"), but it turns out, it's an OPEN - OUTDOOR museum! That's why they call it the "open air"!! duh. I must have been really tired still!
Anyway, Cappadocia and Goreme are known for their "fairy chimneys." Cappadocia and Goreme are in the middle of Turkey, surrounded by a ton of mountains. I guess ppl (back in the day), found these cool caves in those mountains and turned them into their homes and even turned some of them into churches! Super awesome!!!
So, we read in the Turkey tourbook that the museum is really close and we could walk there. That's exactly what we did b/c it was supposed to be around the corner and about 2 miles away! Little did we know that it was going to be really hot and that 2 miles is really far!!!
On our way there, we came across this cool little place:
The Flinestone's Cave Bar!!! Hilarious!! =)
After walking for what seemed like forever (b/c of the heat) and asking some guys (from UVA) if we were close, we finally made it to the museum. Here's some museum pics:
See the pointy chimneys in that above pic? Those are the "fairy chimneys"!! The below pic is a mural drawn in a cave church:
About 1/3 of the way through the museum, it started thundering and before we knew it, it was pouring rain!!! We waited it out in a cave until the rain stopped, but it felt like forever, so after about 30 min of waiting in a cave (and when the rain eased up a bit), we ran through a few more caves and then had to wait in another cave b/c it started pouring again! And when I say pouring, I don't mean West Coast thunderstorm. It was definitely an East Coast thunderstorm (as identified by Russ)! ;)
We made it out of the museum alive, but wet from the thunderstorm. We had lunch and as we were headed home, it started POURING again! That's when we bumped into a bunch of young Turkish girls who probably had never seen Asian ppl before and mobbed us for a bunch of pics!! Russ loved the attention, but I kept trying to hide! I guess that's why Russ is the actor and I'm not. We rested in our cave hotel, ventured out to dinner, and ended the night w/ some relaxation at a cafe:
The next day, we drove around Cappadocia and went to Derinkuyu - an underground city!!! It apparently was built during the Byzantine Empire and was where Christians would hide when the Romans were attacking! It was soooo awesome in there! But it had really low ceilings, so we had to be hunched over for much of our random tour. =)
Luckily, we didn't get lost in the underground city (it went down about 11 floors)! We just kept following the arrows and hoped that we would make it back out to the exit. ;)
After Derinkuyu, we headed on a road trip around Cappadocia and ended up at Sky Church. It was a HUGE steep walk up to the church! Russ and I wondered how ppl (back in the day) made it up the hill. They probably were in much better shape than we were!!
We drove around more countryside and saw a bunch of small towns and ppl driving around on their tractors. Apparently, in Turkey, driving your entire family (including small children) on a tractor is perfectly normal. Here's a better picture of the towns in this remote part of Turkey:
Our last night in Turkey, we had a nice dinner and went back to the same cafe to relax. I'm wearing a double sweater b/c I was soooo cold from the continued thunderstorms!
The next day, we left Goreme at 6am and were inundated with hot air balloons! I guess that's where everyone takes the hot air balloon ride! There were billions of them! OK...maybe not billions, but there were a lot! We tried to take some pics, but they didn't turn out very well b/c of the lighting.
Here's our last view of Goreme before we left. You can still see the gloomy skies from the thunderstorms:
And I was able to convince Russ to slow down enough so that I could capture a pic of the family tractor car on the highway! hahaha
Stay tuned for Part 3 - Istanbul!!!
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