Cappadocia Day 1

We fly to Cappadocia in the late morning. Today is the last day of Ramadan, tomorrow is Eid. In Turkey, they use the term Ramadan Bayrami.

After arriving, we visit the Göreme open air museum

This area is famous for the man-made caves dug into the soft tufa (volcanic ash) deposited in many layers from eruptions from three volcanos in the area.

Peoples in the area have been carving housing into the tufa for thousands of years. Early Christians also carved churches into the rock. They also served as protection from the Romans during the Christian persecution.

It’s not allowed to take photos inside these cave churches, but the Dark church is pretty spectacular. See the same Göreme open air museum link above for a photo of a portion of the ceiling in the spectacular Dark church.

There also was a sign outside that had some portions of paintings that I could take a picture of.

Here is one the has partially collapsed, so it’s possible to take photos from outside. It’s right next to the most spectacular one. This one has very simple decorations, not the elaborate paintings.

After the museum, we drove to a restaurant that was also built in a Fairy Chimney which is a portion of the tufa that the harder basalt cap has not worn away, so it protects the softer rock below.

Two young men came in while we ate and played drum and guitar while singing a few traditional Turkish songs for us.

After supper we arrived at our hotel for the next few nights, which is a cave hotel. The hotel bought up a bunch of houses on the cliff side and has renovated it into a luxury hotel.

Our room was carved out of the rock.

We went to bed as quickly as possible, as we have a 4am wake-up call for a balloon ride over the countryside. The weather may or may not cooperate, we won’t find out till we get to the balloon in the morning if we’re really going to get to fly. They didn’t fly this morning, as the winds were too strong. The following morning, May 3rd, is forecast to be raining, so they likely won’t be able to fly then either.