Turkish Delight–Part 3

We spent the second half of our trip in Central Turkey in an area called Cappadocia which is famous for it’s bizarre rock formations.  We stayed at an AMAZING 8 bedroom hotel in Goreme.

Most of our time in Cappadocia was spent napping, playing cards, drinking apple tea, eating, and we did some hiking/sight seeing.

The first day that we arrived, Paul and L were worn out and decided to nap.  I was too excited to see what the little town had to offer so I roamed a bit on my own.  I got a bit cold and hungry so I ducked into a little place and ordered a “Turkish Pizza’ with green apple tea.  The pizza was delicious—they put egg on it which was really good.

That night we tried out a restaurant called Sedef.  We actually walked past it first on our way to a different restaurant and the staff had asked us to come in but we told them “no.”  For some reason we were drawn back, and we were glad that we changed our minds.  This ended up being our restaurant of choice for 3 out of 4 dinners that we had in Goreme.

Mmmmm… that bread was sooo good!

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The next day we opted to have the hotel owner give us a half day tour of the area.  He had grown up there and lived there all his life, so it was fun to hear about the history and fun facts about the town from him.

Walking through a family farm to our next stop

Slippery slope

Engravings above a “church” that was carved into the rock.  The little holes are for pigeons which they still use today.

King of the rock (this is the pulpit of the church).  Can you imagine if you were the one to make a mistake and chisel away something that wasn’t supposed to be removed?  I bet the whole group of masons or whatever they were called would kick you out of their town.

That’s the town of Goreme in the mid-ground.  And you can see the volcano turned ski resort in the top right corner.

At the end of our tour, Hassan dropped us off at the “Open Air Museum” which is a grouping of a bunch of churches…

Open Air Museum

From the Open Air Museum we walked back to our sleepy village and headed to the “living room” of our hotel for some cards…

View from our hotel

Then off to dinner…

The oven where they cooked our delicious bread and “Testi Kebaps” which are local Cappadocian cuisine

The Testi Kebap (… I said go slowly)

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The next day we opted to check out one of the underground cities (Kaymakli).  These are completely underground communities that were often inhabited by persecuted Christians.  I felt a little claustrophobic at times and we definitely didn’t wander too far off the main path or out of earshot from the tour groups, because I could see how one could get easily lost.  We only went down 2 or 3 stories, but I think there was at least 6 or 7 that has been excavated to date.  We opted to go “guide-less” much to the dismay of one of the locals at the entrance that just kept trying to get us to hire him.  We probably missed out on some things, but we also enjoyed making up our own ideas for what various rooms and nooks were for.

Afterwards we did our fair share of shopping in the little market outside and then headed back to the bus stop to catch a ride back (which was the longest, coldest wait ever!)

This guy was selling all sorts of “magic foods”…  I think we just opted for the corn nuts and apricot seeds

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On our last day, we decided to make our own adventure and go on a hike of the surrounding area.  We hopped on a bus to take us up to the top of a hill/mountain and then meandered our way back down towards Goreme.  The hike was a bit treacherous at times and we didn’t have a map, but compared to our Ras Al Kaimah hike, it was nothing :)

Packed as a Rock, huh Marv?

You’re a cheater and you know it…

I even got to sneak in a little bit of shopping :)

Our last night in Goreme we headed back to our hotel, played some cards and then grabbed one last meal at Sedef… yummm!  After dinner, Paul and I went to the kitchen with the hotel owner to get some food for our breakfast the next morning since we’d be leaving too early for the normal breakfast.  The food was soo good we couldn’t think of missing it!  Paul kept making fun of me because I asked probably 4 or 5 times if we could have some of the honey to eat with our bread and cheese.  The honey they had was from local farmers and was delicious!  The breakfasts there were amazing—I  would go back just to eat breakfast there again :)

Brothers…