This morning we
had a very early wakeup call – 2:45 AM as we had to leave for the airport at
3:30 to fly to Cappadocia. The flight,
which departed at 6:45 took about 1 hour and was uneventful.
Cappadocia is an
area where millions of years of rain and wind have shaped tufa (soft white
volcanic rock) into an out-of- this world landscape of cones, pillars,
pinnacles, and fairy chimneys that rise more than a hundred feet into the sky. During the early ancient years, people in
this area used hand tools to carve out thousands of these freestanding tufa
formations into cave-like rooms to provide protection from invaders and the
weather. They also built underground
cities that were home to over 20,000 people.
In addition to the tufa homes, there are more than 600 Christian
churches, dating back to the 3rd century AD, carved out of this soft
rock. Even today there are still people
living in these cave-like homes.
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| Mt. Erciyes |
After arriving in Cappadocia, we boarded our bus for our trip to the hotel. Unfortunately, OAT had to make a last-minute change to our hotel as the original one was seized by the Turkish government for not paying its bills. One of the first sites we saw as we left the airport was the snow-covered peaks of Mt. Erciyes, a dormant volcano that is Turkey's 6th highest mountain.
We made several stops along the way, the
first a short photo stop to see our first glimpse of these spectacular rock
formations. It reminded us of Bryce
National Park except that these formations were white or amber while in Bryce, the
hoodoos are more red/orange. There was one
rock formation that looked just like a camel.
It was an amazing sight!
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| Cappadocia Landscape |
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| Camel Rock |
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| Cappadocia Landscape |
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| Cappadocia Landscape |
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| Cappadocia Landscape |
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| Cappadocia Landscape |
Our next stop was to Göreme, an open-air museum of over 600
ancient rock-cut churches, chapels, monasteries and houses. Most are unoccupied
now, but there are a few that house a café or restaurant. Inside these cave
churches are beautiful Byzantine frescoes from the 10th-13th centuries, but unfortunately, they do not allow photos (so I will "borrow" a few from the internet). We visited several of the churches, but the early
morning wake-up was beginning to affect our ability to do much uphill climbing
that was required to see more of the structures. So we walked back down to a little café for
some lunch and some Turkish ice cream.
This ice cream is different from ours as it is not real soft and does
not melt. It is more like the taffy that
my grandmother used to make that you had to pull before cutting into small
pieces. It is more chewy and sticky than
our ice cream. This is due to the
inclusion of a starchy root of wild orchids that is called salep and the use of
goat milk. But it is very good and
tastes much like our ice cream.
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| Turkish Ice Cream being Twirled Around |
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| Goerme Open Air Museum |
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| Cave Homes |
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| Cave Church |
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| Cave Homes and Churches |
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| Cave Homes |
The following pictures of the inside of some of the cave churches are compliments of the Internet
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| Cave Church with Beautiful Mosaics |
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| Cave Church with Beautiful Mosaics |
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| Inside a Cave Church |
We finally arrived at our hotel, the Barcelo in the small
village of Ortahisar. It was a very nice
hotel with a spa and Turkish bath on the premises. Actually it was much nicer than the hotel
that had been originally booked for us. We
had dinner at the hotel and then had a somewhat early night as tomorrow we have
another early wake-up, only this time it is only 4 AM!
Tonight we had
a group dinner at our hotel.
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