Cappadocia Palace Hotel Nevsehir Urgup

... parking lot we see that about 50 buses have disbursed their passengers at the site, making us happy that we chose to get an early start. On the way back we happened by the Alaturca restaurant again and took the time to have a nice meal on the outside terrace. I ordered a "meatball" which turned out to be a large hamburger patty with mash potatoes. Now those of you who know me well, know that I am not a meat and potato man ...

... in the centre of it. We sit by the stove to warm up and then eat. They have apple tea here. It is very good, hot and tasty. Too bad they serve all their drinks in these little glass cups, a mug would have been more enjoyable. It begins to rain, pour and then turns to ice or snow pellets. We put on our rain pants and get out the umbrellas. It stops raining and we have an enjoyable walk home. We spend the afternoon on the computer in the reception ...

... The volcanic ash, wind and water formed all these fairly-like chimneys and cones all over the city. Very eerie and beautiful at the same time. We went to the open air museum one day and basically saw an entire city in the side of mountains. Then, got up at 6am to take a hot air balloon ride over the city. Gorgeous and definitely one of the highlights of our trip so far.

... with lid for us and then they asked who wanted a go and Hawke is always our nominated demonstator (18yrs old from Canada) so he got up and they let him loose. He couldn't really get it to do anything other than make it look like some from the male anatomy. We were then shown the finished products and the local designs they use to decorate them. we were again let loose in the show room and I was interested in 2 plates because they could ship them home but then they told me that the one I ...

... It had a little trough and opening at the bottom of it that must have allowed the juice to flow out. There were even storage shelves carved into the walls of the kitchen area. (We tried to guess what might have been stored there - but were told that it is more likely there were candles and wooden dishes and not a micowave or long-screen TV. (They would have fit well enough!) Each of these 'buildings' also had ...

Took the public bus today about 40km out to see a cool underground city today http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derinkuyu I took a little video inside despite the low light... http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid =58356167052411981&hl=en

... down steps to about the fifth story when I slipped and almost took out Gracey as well as myself. After we FINALLY got through all six stories we met another family from America. There was a castle about a half a mile away so we asked them if there were any restaurants near the castle. They say no, and we beleived them (I thought the castle looked like a dry peice of clay). So we went down the hill again, and found a nice ...

I started the day out at Ataturk's Mausoleum in Ankara. It was very interesting and much larger than I expected. It was full of information about Ataturk and his reforms and he even gave his daughter a revolver as a birthday gift! In a way, the mausoleum reminded me of the Stalin nuseum in Gori, Georgia, though at the same time completely different ...

... feat of constructing something like that entirely by hand, without the benefit of computer modelling or any other planning tools. It was a little claustrophobic at times, since the troglodytes were obviously much smaller than us and some of the tunnels were pretty skinny, but we had a great time exploring all of the little chambers, storage areas, churches, schools, and even underground wineries in this massive complex. They even had complete ...