Alfina Hotel Cappadocia Urgup

... talking a lot about dancing and about goofy dance music.

My personal favorite uber goofy dance song: the YMCA. Well, actually I don't like the song, and it's actually not that fun to dance to. As only a crazy politico like me could actually think, I love the YMCA for the irony in it's popularity. Take any sporting event anywhere in America and you can find the YMCA. Everyone does it, old, young, male, female, etc. It's at baseball, football, basketball, probably ...

... stories and held up to 15000 people at one time. the one we toured was only 8 stories deep! they were able to cook and ventilate the areas without difficulty. also had large stones that they could use to block the entrances in case of attack. no wonder the romans didn,t try to eradicate them.
lunch in a small village not yet affected by tourism. ate turkish family ...

... top. We see a parking area and head for it, hoping to catch a ride back to Goreme. A young Turkish couple pick us up, they are touring this area and we all get lost. Len takes out our little map and helps find out way to Goreme. Walking back, we might have made it before dark. They had wanted to go to the Open Air Museum but couldn't find it so we showed them where to go and we walked back to our hotel. I soaked in the Jacuzzi, it was very nice for my tired ...

... wall! It was amazing. On top of the valley, the sun was seering but down below it was so cool. Even in some of the dwellings I got into, you could feel the coolness. It was great because I was taking strain! I didnt manage to get to the Rose Valley but saw pretty much all of Pidgeon Valley and got some amazing panoramic views from another place. See, in the valley, some dwellings were so high up! I coudl work out how these people got in there and ...

... monasteries took us over 2 hours to check out. We were able to look and wander in a Nun's convent, and many chapels and churches with incredibly old frescoes (paintings) on the inside walls, ceilings and archways. There were even kitchens and a refectory. The refectory had a long dinding table and benches cut from the rock. At the end of the table, there was a hollowed out area that we read was probably for pressing ...

Neste dia batemos todos os recordes de fotos. A regiao eh surreal, parecia que estavamos em outro planeta. E cada novo local que visitavamos era uma novidade. Surpreendente! Eh um local pouco conhecido no Brasil, mas eh o local mais diferente que fomos em nossas vidas. As fotos talvez nao consigam dar a nocao do que eh o lugar. Comecamos o dia acordando bem cedo pois fomos passear de balao pela Capadocia. Fechamos varios tours com uma agencia de ...

... days before. Everybody had the same thing as last time too. Turkich Pizza and meat in a pot. After lunch, we went to Rose Valley. It had many ancient ruins, but that was nothing compared to the hundreds of fairy chimneys against the mountains! We were going to go up, but it looked like it was going to start raining. So it was time to go. That night, we had Turkish Pizza (again) while watching North by Northwest.

... two carpets out of the jumble we had been shown after Jess had given me the nod. 'Ah, you have very good taste' our new attendant told Jess. 'These rugs are very fine quality. Compare these with these inferior rugs. These [indicating the inferior ones] are still good, but not in the same class as the ones you have selected.' 'Yes, but how much are they.' 'This larger one is 1500 lira, the smaller one is 1000 lira. 2500 for the two. For you, I will throw in ...

... more spaced out and elaborate, with several of the churches containing frescoes, 3 of which were breathtaking. The rest slightly looked like a 5 year old monk with a red crayon went to town. The difference in the designs made us appreciative of the good ones. Next stop was Ortahisar. Ortahisar is a tiny turkish town, which is apparently ruled by a Lemon Mafia, but is also friendly, congenial, and charming. After lunch we had a walk around town ...

... the side of a hill either, this church had four large columns going up about three meters to the ceiling. But this was not to be the last church we would see. All up there are around three thousand known underground churches in the area. We havn't seen all of them of course but we have seen enough. Some of them have beautiful frescos that are in relatively good condition that were painted in the 11th century. We also visited an ...