Day 5 and Day 6 in Turkey : Cappadocia

Observations in Turkey: Youtube is blocked. (I am surprised) 

                                    In spite of the beauty of many sites, there is often piles of rubbish all around. Especialy in semi rural areas, just plastic bags blown around, and piles of garbage next to beautiful mosques or castles. Its really incongruous. 

View from the balcony of our flat in Goreme

Sorry for all the photos. This place is just so bizarre.

Very slow start after very late night. Slept in till 9.30. Walked out of our room to this amazing site of a cave city. Can't wait to go exploring. Fortunately we are here for two nights so we can take it a bit easy. Beautiful breakfast again with am awesome view.

We are now in Cappadocia, staying in Goreme. A leisurely start to the day for  change after 4 days of frantic activity and a very late night last night. Our accommodation in Goreme is really great. The whole town is built into caves and rocks, as is our hotel. 

We ate breakfast at the hotel (another lush Turkish breakfast feast) and the waiter looked like Christopher Walken, which was more than a bit disturbing. He was very polite and helpful , and got us Turkish coffee. (Loving the coffee!!) Everyone here wants to sell us something, but they are very nice and friendly too.

We drove through Nevseher then   spent a couple of hours checking out an underground city at Kaymakli.

 I know that an essential part of travel in Turkey is being sold stuff and strongly encouraged to pay for lots of things, like tourist guides, but it did get the better of me today. The potential guide at the underground city was especially insistent. In the end I said No! No! Please No (in half frustrated english, half turkish) !. I guess he was having a lean day. 

We managed to enjoy exploring the city without his help, and crept down some steep tunnels into big rooms, and then more big rooms. It really was an amazing place. The inhabitants built themselves great ventilation, and cooked in there safely. The city went down at least 8 levels. Down there they were safe from their enemies because they were well hidden. If you are claustrophobic, I suggest you avoid it on your Capadocian holiday.

Today we had a chance to really use our very limited Turkish. We had postcards to post, and therefore stamps to buy. In Turkish, we managed to ask where the post office was, then buy the stamps, then post the cards. On the whole, we have found many people speak English, although admittedly, most people we speak to deal with a lot of tourists and clearly are bilingual. But people do seem to be happy to hear us attempt their language, so we will continue to do so.

For centuries, people in this region have and do live in caves and houses and castles hewn out of the rock. We headed out on a number of adventurous and steep drives today to see various views of the amazing formations, some natural, some man made. Its a landscape like no other.

We also did some exploring on foot around various sites. At Pasa Baggia we got hassled by an especially man who claimed to be a tourist waiting for his friends, and wanted to recommend a carpet factory/shop in another town. We only had half an hour before it closed, and it was only open for one day, (really??) and we said no and he made us a map (a photocopied map) and gave it to me. In the end he said if we weren't going, he wanted his map back. I gave it back and we looked at rock caves, which we are much more interested than carpets, sorry. Ah the joys of Turkey.

We somehow missed dinner at the hotel, so we drove down to the town because it started to rain. At last, we had some pide. It was delicious of course. I hope we will have some more. Walked around the town some more, looking at shops. Didn't get hassled too much. Its a fairly touristy town. I wonder about the shop keepers. Do they ever go home? Where are their homes. They just seem to be at work all the time. Its the same in Istanbul.

The camel handlers are really mean to their camels. Its a sad thing for the animals. :(

Baby camel. His leash is way too short. :(

Goreme

Zelve Church

We only had half a day to explore some more of the caves. We headed to a town called Zelve and walked around many cave homes there. People in Zelve lived in these houses till the 1950s when erosion caused them to all have to leave.

Mosque in Zelve

Zelve Monastery 

We packed a heap of stuff into that morning. I was intrigued about what happened to the inhabitants of Zelve, so we asked a shopkeeper (when we bought a book from him) and he said they moved to a nearby town. On the way to the airport (just a small local airport this time, very regional) we stopped at that town. It looked like they had just built a whole lot of identical appartments for them. Reminded me of Toongabbie East, to be honest. Anyway, we decided to be brave and stopped at a ceramic shop, met the lovely owner, told him we didn't have time to look at his carpet because we had a plane to catch. "haviliama iki" . Not the best turkish ever. "Airport two". He was really nice and we bargained him down. Bought a lovely plate. Felt very pleased with ourselves and left for the airport.

Zelve

Zelve

We had also driven up a high track to find yet another souvenir shop that also sold coffee. It was windy and freezing so we stood inside to drink it, with the owner who was not really interested in us and spoke no english. Still, it was warm and the coffee was nice.

Houses in zelve

Pigeon holes, artistically decorated by Islamic artists. 

View from the top (cafe)

 Mal's Rehab conference starts tomorrow, so we have had to leave the wonderful mystical caves and rocks of Cappadocia, and return to the real world, well, at least the city, of Istanbul. Yet another plane flight.

Haggia Sophia. The view from our balcony.