Cappadocia: The most magical place on Earth?

Hello from Istanbul!

So clearly, Alice and I made it safely to Turkey and through the first leg of our trip, and although we've already been here for 5 days, I'm just now getting some time to sit down and put together some thoughts on our travels thus far.

Sunday afternoon, after packing up my things and watching some last-minute Olympics coverage, one of my students from the summer offered me a ride to the airport in Singapore, which was both incredibly nice and incredibly important (as he was the one who managed to successfully argue with the check-in desk when they tried to skimp me on my luggage allowance).  About 15 hours later, I landed at London Heathrow, where I spent 4.5 hours clearing immigration, collecting my luggage, changing terminals, checking into a new airline, passing through security, and eating a nice breakfast, all on one of the busiest days in Heathrow's history.  Everything went okay, however (snaps to the Brits!), and Alice and I managed to rendezvous just fine at the Istanbul airport, despite hellishly long lines for both visas and immigration clearance.

Using the Istanbul metro, the two of us (and all of our luggage!) made it to the Esenler Octogar, the main bus terminal in Istanbul.  Long-distance buses are a very normal mode of transport in Turkey, and we managed to find our bus to Goreme (a town in the central Cappadocia region) with the help of some friendly bus attendants (like flight attendants, but for buses!).  Twelve hours later, we got off the bus and made it to our hotel...for the record, at this point I had been traveling for about 42 hours straight.

Alice and I were both absolutely exhausted, but our hotel - called the Kelebek Hotel and Cave Pension - more than made up for the journey.  The staff members were welcoming and attentive, the breakfast and view from the terrace was amazing, and our room was in an actual cave (see below).  Even though we arrived at about 8 AM, the staff made sure we got into our room straight away, and even let us help ourselves to breakfast even though we weren't technically guests of the hotel as of yet.

Breakfast spread at our hotel - fresh cheeses, vegetables, honey straight from the comb, and LOTS of olives.

The view from Kelebek's breakfast terrace- the pointy things are called "fairy chimneys" and are the most famous type of rock formation in Cappadocia. 

Our room!  In a cave!

Understandably, our first day we were fairly exhausted, so after a long nap we headed into town to do some quick shopping and grab some snacks and cay (Turkish tea, which is pronounced "chai"), as well as smoothies made from fresh fruit, honey, and thick yogurt (what we would call "Greek" yogurt in the US).  In the evening, we returned to our hotel to visit the hamam (Turkish bath).  After the discomfort of our travels, Al and I decided to spring for the full experience - we checked out the sauna, got exfoliating treatments, received face masks, and finished with short massages.  That evening I definitely slept like a rock!

The hamam at our hotel.  For the exfoliating treatment, they make you lie on the heated marble in the center, do the exfoliating stuff, then they cover you in bubbles and throw bowls of water on you to remove everything.  It was definitely a unique experience!

The next day, we decided to take a guided tour through an agency associated with our hotel, which ended up being us and about 10 other people from Italy, the US, and Canada.  Our first stop was a town called Mustafapasa, a city in Cappadocia with several thousand years worth of history, which our tour guide ran through in about 10-15 minutes.  Most interestingly, Mustafapasa was a place where Greek Christians, Turkish Christians, and Turkish Muslims lived (relatively) peacefully together for hundreds of years, until the Turkish Republic was founded in 1923.  At this point, Greece and Turkey did a "population exchange" - essentially a forced relocation of Muslims in Greece to Turkey and Christians in Turkey to Greece.

The large building in front was originally a church (you can see the tiny tiny spire above the apex just to the right), but when Muslims conquered the area, it was converted into a mosque.

After Mustafapasa, we drove to the Keslik Monastery, a series of caves in 4 fairy chimneys that would have once held 200-400 priests and students (about 1000 years ago).  This is the first place we got to see paintings in caves used as churches (see below), which were really beautiful, although badly damaged by soot (hence the black layer on top) and various vandalism across the ages.  We also got to see the kitchen and dining area for members of the monastery, which was really cool!

Paintings in the church (covered in 17th and 18th century graffiti).

Alice sits in the dining room of the monastery - in front of her is a table carved into the stone of the cave, and on either side were long benches for the students to sit and eat.

After the monastery, we made a quick stop to an archaeological site excavating ruins left by the Romans during a campaign through central Turkey.  Although funding has been limited and therefore excavation has been slow, there were some incredible mosaics in near-perfect condition unearthed and on display (see below).

Mosaics!

After a group lunch, we started a short hike through the Soganli Valley, where we got to see a few more churches and rock formations.  The one below was probably the coolest we saw - at the top there were two church rooms, one on top of the other, and below that (on the right side of the photo) was where families would live, cook, and raise their children.  It was amazing to me that this one big rock was an entire community, and some people may go their whole life without straying far from it.

A Cappadocian neighborhood.

Our final stop of the day was the Derinkuyu Underground city, the deepest of the 32 discovered underground cities in Turkey (the lowest level unearthed thus far is 70 meters below the surface!).  Used up until the 11th century, these cities were built to allow farming communities to hide from whatever invading army happened through the region, and they had areas designated for family quarters, cooking, worshipping, meeting, and even stables for the livestock.  Although archeologists don't really know how many people lived there at a given time, estimates range from 2,000-10,000 people, with maximum estimates of 60,000!

None of my pictures from the underground city really came out (clearly) - but as you can see it looks like...a cave.

On our final day, we visited the Goreme Open Air Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage Site made up of dozens of Fairy Chimneys with housing and churches inside.  One of the churches, called the "Dark Church," had some of the more amazing frescoes we'd seen, and even included a rare depiction of Jesus in his teenage years!  The dates on the various paintings ranged from about the 6th to the 12th centuries, so we got to see a good mix of different styles and such throughout the tour.

After a delicious dinner of testi kebap (lamb stew cooked in a terra cotta pot which is cracked open at the table) and manti (little Turkish ravioli served in a yogurt sauce), Alice and I boarded another bus bound for Istanbul, where we arrived at about 7:30 on Friday morning.  I'll save all of our Istanbul adventures for another post, most likely after returning home to the States on Wednesday.

Wish us luck for our last few days here!

Dara