It took longer than expected to get to Cappadocia. It was delayed two hours for take-off and then the pilots decided to give us a nice circle tour of Nevşihir… a couple of times, so we wouldn’t miss anything. We were also a bit surprised on how long it took to get from the Nevşihir airport to the town of Göreme. We mistakenly believed that the Nevşihir airport was in Nevşihir. Fortunately, we arrived at our hotel Ufuk (more about this later) with plenty of time to book our balloon flight and go to the Open Air Museum before dinner.
I read in the Lonely Planet guide that we needed to go to the Open Air Museum but I didn’t read further. As a result, I had no idea what to expect. I guess I just assumed it would be like a normal museum except outside. This was not the case. It is actually a series of cave dwellings used by the early Byzantines that lived in the area and included a number of chapels. Most of the room and chapels were pretty bare but a few had some very colorful frescoes remaining. We wandered in and out of the caves for an hour or so before heading back into town to explore. We had two items on the exploration agenda: 1. Book a tour to an underground city for the following day; and 2. Seek out genuine fake sunglasses for Colleen to replace the pair she left in Şirince. We were successful on the first count but not on the second. All over Selçuk and Fethiye we saw signs advertising both genuine fake watches and genuine fake sunglasses but there were few choices available in Göreme.
After dinner we headed back to Ufuk. We booked a cave room so that we could imagine what it was like to sleep like the Byzantines in a cave (that is if the Byzantines had electricity, running water and a bed). After our long day traveling and wandering Göreme, Colleen and I were really looking forward to our “guaranteed hot showers 24 hours a day.” We quickly concluded that the hot water was cold and the cold water was frigid. I guess they meant that we could get hot water from the kitchen 24 hours a day? So after our “refreshing” showers we went to bed already questioning the plan to get up at 4:15 AM for our balloon ride.
It never really occurred to me that the Kapadokya balloon company had more than one balloon so I was surprised to see that about 50 other passengers beat us to the office in town to await their flight. It took about 30 minutes after arriving to deal with logistics – paying, getting our pilot assignment, drinking coffee (or tea) before boarding a mini-bus with 10 other passengers also assigned to the Sanjay balloon. On the way to the launch site we quickly realized that nearly every tourist in Göreme was awake and boarding a balloon somewhere in the vicinity. There were probably about 40 balloons in total flying between 500-750 tourists. The flight itself was spectacular. We hovered above the unique landscape, both soaring high above the hills and dipping deep into the valleys during our hour-long flight. Once we landed we were each given a flying certificate and a Turkish mimosa (champagne with cherry juice) to celebrate the journey and safe landing. All of this and we were back at our hotel by 8:00 AM.
Side note: Our captain, Sanjay Gupta (not the CNN newscaster/doctor) had previously lived in San Francisco and worked for Deloitte Consulting. Colleen and Sanjay spent a great deal of the morning comparing (her current and his former) colleagues and learned that they had a lot in common. Now Sanjay is a bit of a nomad, traveling all over the world working as a balloon pilots (winters in Melbourne, this summer in Cappadocia, and next summer in Kenya).
Since this was really our only full day in Cappadocia, we had to keep busy. We scheduled a tour that started at 9:30 AM. Most of the tour was ho-hum. The sights were beautiful but I could have happily skipped the 4 km walk through the Ihlara valley and the stone polishing demonstration/shopping trip. However, it was worth it to go to the underground city, Derinkuyu. This city was used by various peoples throughout the generations to hide from various attackers. It goes 150 m down and has a total of 8 floors. While very cool, this is not a trip for the claustrophobics. We spent a lot of time walking through narrow corridors with low ceilings. Colleen and I both had to duck. We also went to the Selime monastery. This is another cave dwelling that, in this case, house 600 monks and nuns during its peak.
We got back to Göreme at 6:00PM. The previous day we made reservations at a restaurant named Dibek. This restaurant is apparently the only one in town that serves genuine testi kebabs. This is a dish that is cooked for hours in a clay pot that is then broken open at the table. We’d been hearing about testi kebabs since Dalyan so our expectations were high, but I must say that Dibek far exceeded them. Colleen had the veggie version that made me very jealous because it was so good. I went with the beef, which was also spectacular. I’m now a little disappointed that we didn’t have it the previous night so we could each try it again.
All in all, one of the best day’s so far. Tomorrow we return to Istanbul.
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