Altinoz Nevsehir

... for, but we never made it. Instead we just did a big circle around the thing and found ourselves in the center of town with the angry traffic cop again... Oh well.<br><br>We made it out of town and saw signs for the Rose Valley. The Rose Valley look-out point is really the best place to watch the sunset in Cappadocia. The rock formations of the rose valley are...surprise surprise...rose colored, and the view of the red sunset with the red rock in the forground is ...

... s he doing Jeremy?"<br><br>"I don't know...we weren't going to stop here..."<br><br>Aleem popped back in a minute later with an enourmous loaf of beautiful Turkish bread, warm and fresh and delicious, for the bus to share.<br><br>The drivers, though unable to speak much English at all, really do care about their passengers, which is quite nice.<br><br>The ride to Cappadocia that day was long, very long. A lot of people do it on the night bus from Olympos, but I'm kind of ...

... served &#305;n t&#305;ny tea cups) &#305;n a local shop and we spent a good half hour loung&#305;ng on p&#305;llows and mattresses on the floor. Afterwards, we explored the caves and rooms carved out of a rock s&#305;tt&#305;ng on top of a h&#305;ll &#8211; the crown jewel of th&#305;s town &#8211; and we d&#305;d &#305;t all on foot, on our own, free of charge and free of any other tour&#305;sts. Th&#305;s was mag&#305;cal. It &#305;s not often that you stumble on a ...

... with white faced Westerners. But after more than a month in 'the wilderness' of the Caucasus I was looking forward to some company from closer to home. It came in the form of Alice- a French archaeologist who I ended up sharing a dorm with in the hostel. A PhD student from Paris, Alice was full of interesting info about the area having conducted many excavations in and around Goreme. I wanted to stay longer as Goreme ...

... in somewhat of a trance-like state. It was very relaxing and enjoyable. Michael on the other hand, immediately assumed what he calls the Louis A position....meaning the position his grandpa assumes at any show....head up, eyes closed, pretending he's paying attention. He claims to have enjoyed the show as well. DAY 3: Friday morning we awoke to gray skies and rain, and were immediately thankful that we had done our ballooning the day prior. Mark and Cheryl, our previously ...

... been traced back thousands of years - most of us have saýd that we are all very embarrassed about beýng so ýgnorant about thýs part of the world - hýstory ýn our schools ýs maýnly amerýcan and western european but there were entýre advanced cývýlýzatýons ýn eastern europe as well we later stopped at the burýal place of an ýmportant suftý (whýrlýng dervýsh) leader - ý am afraýd that ý am ODýng on the relýgýous hýstory of these regýons - ý fýnally thought ý SLIGHTLY understood the ...

... the tour is the underground city of Derinkuyu. During some of the heaviest times of persecution entire cities were built underground. This is the largest of them and has some 20 kilometers of tunnels, only ten percent of which is visitable. We spent a good hour touring through this labyrinth of caves stretching eight levels down from the surface. There were stables for the animals, and massive ventilation shafts, and large storage rooms, and of course churches. It reminded us of the ...

... or two others opted out as well while the rest of the group went inside for the tour and fancy pricing 'special for you'. Yes special indeed. This is where the tour ends. We were taken back into town where we enjoyed some quiet time at our pansiyon (hostel). We wonder where Boobs MacGilligy and Blonde Ambition are headed next. They are sure to get there slowly and in their own time. Countries around the world beware! Hugs and Love, Dana and Trevor.

Went hiking again today. Man, was it HOT. I had a week of bad weather, but now I've had almost a week of great weather. Today it almost hit 26 degrees. I was out there dragging myself around for about 6 hours so was real beat end of day. Took a little video again. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid =-1821415662091772509&amp;hl=en

... pit but was also wired with a fridge and a stove. We thought we were short on time but we gave him a few lira for his time and snapped a couple pictures with him. Before heading back to the bus, we took a self-timed group photo. As the light flashed on Nathan's camera while the timer counted down, the man made us laugh by showing off some of his limited English: "Tick, tock, tick, tock. Cheeeeeese!" After we sprinted back ...