We really had fun running around Istanbul (it is a HUGE city with lots of people!). We more or less mastered the public transportation system by the time we left and managed to hit all of the major sites we had on our list! I will definitely post a more insightful post with an album soon...but for now, I wanted to touch base and give an update on our travels.
On Tuesday night we headed to Sabiha Gokcen airport (on the outskirts of Istanbul...named after their first female fighter pilot) and flew to Kayseri, one of the two airports in the Cappadocia region. There are many many villages in Cappadocia and several major towns - we are staying in a beautiful cave in Goreme (in the heart of the region). We arrived late last night and were greeted with apple tea, shown our rooms, and given advice on what to do over the next few days. ...We are actually staying inside a room carved out of one of the many unique rock formations here - all the walls in our room and ceiling have actual chisel marks! We woke up to an amazing "home grown" breakfast this morning - yogurt and milk from their cow, cheese, jams and honeycomb from the neighbor's farm, fresh eggs...delicious!!! And then we rented a car and explored today - it was so much fun! We have decided that many of the abandoned formations are adult size jungle gyms so we have spent the day climbing, scaling, poking our heads out of various windows to play peekaboo, shuffling out onto ledges, jumping over large holes (that could have led to some serious boo boos), and really having a great time! Tonight my dinner was actually cooked inside a terracotta pot and was cracked open in front of me so I could eat the baked lamb, peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, etc inside - so cool!
Tomorrow we are taking our hot air balloon ride and are hiking one of the nearby valleys to enjoy lunch in a local Turkish village.
We are loving Cappadocia! :) More later!
 |
| entering one of the churches |
 |
| Can you spot Daniel? He is there somewhere! This was our favorite church in Soganli! |
 |
| We truly saw rural Anatolian life today |
 |
| Enjoying the view in Zelve Valley |
 |
| check out that shadow...we thought it was really cool |
No comments:
Post a Comment