Irmak Hotel Avanos Nevsehir

... to be fantastic. So fantastic in fact that you have to pay money to get to the Rose Valley look out point after 6:30 PM.<br><br>Of course, it was about 3:00...so we didn't have to pay.<br><br>The view ain't bad during the day either...<br><br>It was great. Cappadocia was just so beautiful.<br><br>At the lookout point there was a guy selling the same caramel/seseme seed encrusted peanuts that we'd bought earlier on the Agean Coast. They are amazing. We snapped up a bag ...

... we didn't do that, since on the night bus, though you don't have to pay for accomodation, you really don't sleep, so you lose the night and much of the next day too in terms of tired misery. But our journey was made unfortunately longer by a big traffic jam coming out of Antayla. It seems like half the roads in Turkey are under repair...only half of those don't actually seem to have workers on them.<br><br>It was kind of nice to have a group of four passangers on the ...

... l&#305;ke th&#305;s and have &#305;t actually feel authent&#305;c. <br><br>After we explored our l&#305;ttle hearts out we set out on our 5 hour h&#305;ke through what &#305;s referred to as the Red Valley &#8211; a path that snakes through more natural rock format&#305;ons, over crests and h&#305;lls and through mass&#305;ve rock tunnels.<br><br>We ex&#305;ted the town of Cavus&#305;n and qu&#305;ckly real&#305;zed that we had forgotten to eat (whoops!) and before sett ...

... is spectacular- a strange combination of natural wonders and historical conundrums I would recomend walking into this tourist trap with open arms. Unfortunately I was already very delayed in my schedule- not wanting to be caught in the Middle East for too long in the summer heat which was already fast approaching. Heading south toward Syria I was hopeful that my Middle Eastern bid wouldn't end before it had begun...

... Canadian friends we met in Cappadocia, met us bright and early at 9 am. We had decided to rent a car together for the day so that we could explore some of the more distant regions of Cappadocia. Our plan was to first visit Derinkuyu, an underground city, and then head to Ihlara Valley, a lush and fertile hiking area about 100 km away from Goreme. We decided to go with the original plan despite the rain and gloomy weather. The four of us arrived at Derinkuyu at about 10:30 am, to ...

... for a great kebab lunch. Deciding to not hike through the gorge, we went straight for Selime Cathedral, which turned out to be absolutely worth the drive! It is a massive mountain, that is actually an amazing rock cut cathedral. Impossible to explain, Chris and I loved climbing all around the mountain and exploring the interior rooms and sanctuaries. Th einterior just snakes from room to room, often ending in ...

... fferent sects etc of judaýsm ýn ýsrael and some ýslam and now we are beýng ýmmersed ýn moslým hýstory wýth names and places ý have never heard of - our guýde who ýs turkýsh ýs very passýonate and sometýmes assumes we know more than we do about the ýmportant fýgures of turkýsh hýstory - later ý wýll try to gýve a brýef hýstory we arrýved here at the hotel around 5 pm ýn total dark - dýnner ýs at 7 followed by a výsýt to a whýrlýng dervýce servýce - not entertaýnment - ýt ýs a rel ...

... is so beautiful, that you can't take a bad picture'?. Well this place is so beautiful that we feel we couldn't take a good picture becasue when we looked at it, we were never satisfied with the real thing. It was like a disgrace to the actual surroundings to try to fit it into a photo. As we began ...

... Byzantine periods from the 4th to the 11th centuries. We stayed in the small village of Ihlara for a couple of nights in order for us to take in the Ihlara Valley. We hiked a particularly picturesque section of it for about 10 miles. The hike took us from pastures where herders tended to their herds of goats and into deep gorges were tall cliffs rose above us. You often passed local farmers caring for ...

... the bus to make the 3PM meeting time, Amy showed Metin the movie she made of the man playing the saz, and he said, 'Everyone in Turkey plays music.' Ah, well. We enjoyed it. Finally, we went to a whirling dervi&#351 sema (ceremony). It was not as dramatic as we thought it might be, but it was still interesting. Known to the west as Whirling Dervishes, the Mevlevi Order was founded by Mevlana Rumi in the 13th century. The ...