Goreme: Center of Cappadocia Region

  Goreme, Turkey
Wednesday, January 3, 2007

The bus dropped us off in Goreme, one of the main villages in Cappadocia making a living from tourism. In fact, the village is almost all restaurants and guesthouses. When the bus dropped us off we ran into the Korean couple we met in Selcuk and a French-American couple we met in Pamukkale. There is kind of a circuit everyone seems to go in this country. The Koreans were on a tour that was arranged ahead of time and they admitted to getting a bit "toured out". It made us glad that we were traveling on our own and could join tours only when necessary.

Our hotel was another winner, this one owned by a British/Turkish couple that was one of the "cave hotels" built into the rock in the mountain. Cappadocia region has one of the most bizarre topographies on earth caused by a volcano eruption and then the wind and water carving up volcanic rock. The resulting hills are so easy to dig out that the people who inhabited the area made their homes in the caves and even in underground cities. Our room was very interesting. You did feel like you were living in a cave!

We were quite tired when we arrived so we decided to do the tour of the distant sites to keep us awake. Because the price of petrol was so expensive it was the cheapest way, to do it as a group. Half of the tour was Koreans but we also met two Finnish girls, plus an American couple living in Dubai.

Love Valley

It was fun to remember Finland with the Finns and to get some advice on Dubai from the American couple. The tour was also very interesting, we viewed some interesting valleys, went into an underground city and went to a monastery that was built into the side of a mountain. Along with the long car rides we managed to fill the day.

We had a great breakfast with omelets and bread at the guesthouse and one morning we even got french toast with syrup! It turns out she has regular guests who live on an American military base in Turkey and they bring her syrup from their store. She said that only Americans and Canadians are excited about it. Europeans don't know what it is.

The next day we went to some cave villages with the Finnish girls we met the day before. They were very fascinating, a whole village with dining halls, bedrooms and churches carved into the rocks.

Early Cave Church

We hiked home through "Love Valley", a valley named after the very phallic rocks that cover the area. We had great views of the surrounding mountains from the top of the hills there.

One of the activities that looked like fun was the hot air balloon rides over the surrounding area. However, $250 each for a one hour ride was just not in our budget. Julius promised me a hot air balloon ride over the Serengeti one day instead but he probably doesn't know how much that costs! Maybe when we are older and not on a tight budget.

I wanted to take one of the popular night trains from Ankara to Istanbul - I know that I swore off night trains but these are much more luxurious for the price and two people get a room to themselves. I was hoping they are better than the sardine tins in the European trains, plus the night buses are no more restful.

The bus ride to Ankara was the first time on this trip that we saw falling (and sticking) snow! Thank God we saw it once on our trip. This has been a very strange winter for Europe. We expected to see it months ago. This also is a good reminder to anyone who is coming to Turkey in the winter that off the coast Turkey is terribly cold this time of year. Snow is the norm. Quite a few tourist we met were under dressed because they assumed that Turkey is a warm country. I guess it is warm like Minnesota is a warm state. It all depends on the season.

Ankara is not a normal stop on the tourist trail but we hoped to see a few sites while here. Unfortunately with the late bus and the slushy rain in the city we did not have enough time to reach the sites before they closed. We did manage to pick up our tickets since we ordered them online. There was a group of junior high students who were running around the train station in their uniforms, taking photos for a photography class. They were supposed to take photos of interesting things that they saw there and Julius became the most interesting person when we came in. Needless to say he was in a lot of photos. We turned the tables and snapped some of them as well.

The train was great - even better than expected. A large group of Korean tourists were also sharing our car so we didn't feel like the only tourists there. We had big comfy beds, a fridge full of snacks and drinks and the room got cool enough to sleep. Next thing we knew, we were in Istanbul.

  Visit he smugmug page to see all the photos of Cappadocia and Ankara