Ciner Hotel Goreme

... and priest valley, where we climbed into an old rock church. We also visited a local ceramic factory which was actually really really interesting.<br><br> It really is an amazing countryside. One gets the impression that it would be hard to grow tired of looking at it. You can't seem to take a bad photo and there seems to be a never ending run of valleys and walks that you can go on. We will be hiking through Red valley and Rose valley tomorrow and visiting a carpet manufacturer ...

... next day we went for a hike in love valley where the sandstone columns have taken on a very particular natural shape. Before we left for our hike we went to the restaurant we had chosen for the night, Dibek, to put in our order for the traditional dish of Goreme, the Testi Kebab. Meat, garlic, tomatoes and eggplant are put into a sealed pottery jar and cooked for 3 hours. Then, the jar is broken in front of you.<br><br>As we left on our hike, a cute dog from the hostel ...

... how they'd done everything cheaply and successfully and they'd spent a month in Manhattan and time in London where, "All the pubs have 1 pound beers, it is just so cheap."<br><br>That's news to Londoners...I asked Jeremy, who lived in London for 8 months before Turkey if he'd found that to be the case..."Um, maybe in the dodgy ones." <br><br>Catherine, who'd lived in London for a year and a half, said the same things...<br><br>There were the typical complaints about ...

... as small forts to protect the travelling traders at night. Here they could rest in protection from the weather and bandits, in return for some taxes for the Sultan and some trade for the locals. The building itself was really impressive, including a hamam (a turkish bath house) and a mosque. After a chick flick movie in the bus we arrived in Goreme in the heart of Cappadocia. The landscape was just as wild as the guidebooks suggested with wierd rock formations with many ...

... a feed. Then headed off to a neighbouring village where we were scheduled to have dinner with a local family in their home - a cave house. It was beautiful, and great food cooked by the Mum and daughter. Great experience - lovely family with daughter (Elif, 16yo) chatting with Laurs for a while over dinner. Early rise the next day to get our 5.15am shuttle bus to the hot air balloon launch site. Ended up being ...

... a light breakfast, drink tons apple tea (a new favorite), snap a few photos from the hotel&#8217;s rooftop and are now ready to see Cappadocia&#8217;s main attraction. I think our host took pity on how ill prepared we are and gave us a lift up the hill. The Open Air Museum is a preserved area which contains only a fraction of the valleys Byzantine dwellings which are literally carved into the rocks. We are surprised that there ...

... to the Silene Monastery which is carved out of rocks and was an active monaster/church until the time of the Selcuk turks when it became a caravansarei.  Travelers could stay here with their animals (you can stilll smell the barnyard fumes from camels and donkeys).  They stayed for up to 3 days for free and after that they paid a tax. The idea was to promote travel along the Silk Road to promote trade.  Can you say Subsidy? Can you say Socialism?    

7/7-21/7 We left Sanliurfa at about lunch time to drive to Cappadocia. Clive was driving like a dream, and we were doing well until we got lost, yes i know we do this a lot, navigating around a foreign country isn't always the easiest thing to do though. So after an old and very eager man showed us the right way we drove until it got dark and pulled up on a nice little spot by the road to wait until the next day. We got to Cappadocia early afternoon and spent the ...

... ns of all types of carpets and the dyes used and the labour &#305;nvolved &#305;n mak&#305;ng them. It was really, really &#305;nterest&#305;ng, and I ended up buy&#305;ng a very cool p&#305;ece to turn &#305;nto a mass&#305;ve p&#305;llow!! Tomorrow we leave for the Ihlara Gorge; ton&#305;ght we are plann&#305;ng on go&#305;ng to a concert to l&#305;sten to some local mus&#305;c&#305;ans &#305;n a candle-l&#305;t cave- should be great! Love and hugs xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

... down to a form of rock called tufa that is easily eroded by rain and wind. As time went by and the aeons rolled past the erosive elements carved the tufa into surreal shapes to produce a landscape that can best be described as unearthly. Boulders of granite or basalt, caught up in the volcanic ash, didn't erode over time and ended up protecting the tufa below. Now they can be seen as eerie cone-like structures, some still with a boulder balanced precariously on the top. Early ...