About the forming of Landscape and History of Cappadocia
“ Cappadocia is a region of volcanic tuff, basalt and andesite rock. When the volcanic activity ceased some 600 000 years ago erosion began to to abrade the softer soil and the harder stone started to emerge.During this process , in some areas layers of 100 meters of tuff were covered by occasional deposits of lava composed of of harsh basalt.Over thousands of years, rainwater draining through cracks began to wear away the soft layers of tuff, while the winds with the warming and cooling air, assisted the erosion. It was in this manner that cones embedded to mushroom like shapes eventually formed on the tops of hills that were not affected by the erosion.Today what we observe with such an admiration have been named “ fairy chimneys”. The layers of tuff that were not covered with basalt were subject through formation through erosion and were transferred into the valleys that extend one after the other, and eventually into canyons, one more beautiful than the other.....”
From the book, Cappadocia by Turgay Tuna, Bulent Demirdurak, Third Edition July 2013,BGK, Istanbul.
The Cappadocia region has a long history with the first findings about Human presence dating back to 10 000 BC in Çatalhöyük, and the Aşıklıhöyük near the Ihlara Valley in Nevşehir. Throughout it’s history the area was the home of several civilizations and the subject of invasion starting from Hittites, to Persians, Macedonians, the Byzantine and Seljuk Turks and finally to Ottomans. After Jesus was crucified, his apostles started spreading out and several churches, monasteries and underground cities were built in Cappadocia during the Byzantine era. Later when in the fourth century the persecution of Christians began these underground cities and monasteries carved in to the rocky hills of Cappadocia became a safe heaven for the believers. In the following century Cappadocia became the magnet of Christian activity and several of the priest who served there were to be elevated to sainthood.
After a good nights sleep we woke up around 7 am to get ready for the trip to Cappadocia. Cappadocia is the name of the region in central Anatolia which includes the provinces of Kayseri, Aksaray, Nevşehir, Kirşehir, and Niğde. The area we are going to visit with the unusual landscape of fairy chimneys, underground cities, caves, valleys and canyons are in the small cities of Ürgüp and Göreme in the Nevşehir province. We opted to stay in the Ürgüp area at a small village called Mustafapaşa and had made reservations over the internet. We had discussed our plans and gave our friends three hotel names in the area we liked and they had decided on the Art Cave Hotel in Mustafapaşa, Ürgüp, a boutique hotel with only 9 rooms.
The distance between Eskişehir and Ürgüp is about 350 miles and we calculated with our breakfast stop and pit stops to arrive in Ürgüp in about seven hours.We left around 8:30, Sezen driving her BMW and Ilhan navigating without a GPS or a map. In about an hour, outside the city limits of Eskişehir we stopped at an outdoor restaurant by the highway. The breakfast was a typical village breakfast : Freshly made yogurt, so thick that you can cut with a knife and serve without spilling, crumbled village feta, kaşar cheese , (similar to Romano but not as sharp), pure honey in comb, almonds and tea to drink. Ilhan and I also ordered pan fried sunny side up eggs with the sucuk, the spicy Turkish beef sausage. Fresh homemade thin slices of pita bread accompanied the breakfast items. After refreshing myself in the restrooms, a funny thing happened while I was returning to the table. Sitare and Sezen had gone to the gift shop and Ilhan was still sitting at the table.In Eskişehir he had purchased our plane tickets for our return trip from Kayseri to Bodrum and I owed him 300 TL, roughly $ 150. I took the 300 TL out of my wallet and as I was reaching the table from his back I said : "Here is the money I owe you for the plane tickets", handing him the money. The man turned towards me with a strange look in his face, he had a similar plaid shirt on him just like Ilhan but he was not the man I owed the money to. Of course I apologized and put the money back to my pocket. Ilhan was sitting about four tables away. This time I made sure I was face to face with him before taking the money out of my pocket.
Our scheduled route from Eskişehir was mostly on two lane highways going towards Ankara, passing ıt’s environs like Gölbaşı in the South of the Capital city and merging to a new highway to Kayseri farther East and then taking the highway to Ürgüp. We were driving through the still green meadows of the Anatolian plateau, before the color was going to turn to yellow in a month under the hot sun, going through small villages and cities following the fast train tracks from Eskisehir to Ankara. We apparently missed the exit for the the new highway to Kayseri when the two way road became all of a sudden rough. We stopped at a small gas station in the middle of nowhere and found out that we were drıving on the old road to Kayseri. Oh well, the road was a little tough, but there was no traffic and no electronic or patrol speed control like on the new highway. While everybody was trying to use the alaturca restrooms ( with no seat, just a whole on the ground) of the gas station, I walked towards the fields to take pictures of the two poppies I had noticed while driving into the parking lot.When I was a young child there were open fields by the houses and newly built apartments, both in the suburbs of Istanbul and Ankara, full of red poppies. It is a natural, not a planted wild flower all over the Anatolian plateau and as young children we used to pick them, put them in a bottle of water and set it by the window under the sun for few days. Then we would mix it with sugar and put ice in it and drink it like ice tea. It must have been relaxing and refreshing and nobody had said anything against it to me to this day. But more than the taste, I love the red color of them and miss the fields of red poppies in waves under a warm summer breeze, the freedom of running in between them, picking them up and playing in them. The poppy season was over here by May, but there were still few left on the road side here and there often with their red colors fading to a yellowish orange.
Sezen was the solo driver of the BMW SUV
A village Breakfast, Yogurt, Honey, Feta and Kasar Cheese, Almonds, Cay and sunny side up eggs in pan
A village by the Anatolian mainland
Poppys on the fields
Not happy with the rest rooms on the last stop we stopped soon for a second time in a small city with a nice gas station with a convenience store and with nice clean bathrooms. Afterwards Sezen really started pushing the gas pedal hard and around 3:00 pm we passed through Ürgüp stopping at a nice restaurant for lunch and in another fifteen minutes later we were in Mustafapaşa searching for the Art Cave Hotel. Mustafapaşa is an amazing little town with almost a mountain like small peak and several hills full of caves and homes and hotels inside the caves. In the city center there were direction signs of the boutique hotels in the form of arrows, all with the same surname of " Cave" and a different first name. Ours read : Cave Art Hotel of Cappadocia and it was on top the highest peak with a gravel road of a 60 degree slope. There was no way a car going up and another one coming down could pass through the narrow road, let alone our SUV had difficulty going up without not trying to scrape the brick walls in the alleys. On midway to the top we made a wrong turn, there was a an old unused horse wagon blocking our way. Sezen was tired and understandably upset now and to turn the car back from the dead end she had to make at least eight or nine maneuvers before she drove it all the way up the hill to a small parking space. We got out of the car and walked down to the Art Cave Hotel about 25 yards down the hill.
As we went through the gate of the hotel we were pleasantly surprised and immediately knew that we had made the right choice. We had entered from the second floor level to a balcony or terrace welcoming us to comfortable canopies and arm chairs and a scenic view of the cave city. The walls and doors of the motel were decorated with colorful art and craft pieces with Anatolian motives, flowerpots and candlesticks were all over the walk ways. Soon Oya Hanım (Mrs Oya), the owner operator of the hotel came to great us and showed our rooms next to each other on the second floor balcony. The rooms built in a cave with vaulted ceilings were roomy, with a comfortable large bed, with a great view from the window, and a nice shower with all the amenities and hot water, and last but not least wi-fi. After putting our luggage away and refreshing ourselves we went to the terrace to have some coffee and tea and chatted with Oya Hanım about the city and activities around here before going to Ürgüp tomorrow. She told us the best thing at this time of the day was to go up to another nearby hill and watch the sunset, suggested some restaurants, a tour guide ( which we already had booked), and a big event tomorrow in the old Greek church in town.The Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was coming to town to conduct a sermon. It was like a pilgrimage for the followers of the Orthodox faıth who were even coming here for this event all the way from Greece. Of course as istanbulite.com, I made a mental note of this. I had visited the greek Patriarchate in Istanbul in Fener before and to see him, his All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the equivalent of pope in the Orthodox world was a dream for all Greek Christians and a very unlikely occasion for a liberal Muslim person like myself.
Lunch time in Urgup
Our Hotel ontop of the Hill
A look from the second floor of Cave Art Hotel
We skipped the sunset since we were tired , made a small tour of the city: the caves of the village, the Greek Church, the Village Mosque with in addition to the minaret a bell tower looking extension on it's roof , the Asmali Mescit House; the place where the popular Turkish TV series was shot, purchased some extra time for my cell phone from a convenient store and finally settled down at a small restaurant in the back alley of the old church at Heleni's. We ordered some vegetable mezes and patates tava (french fries), wıth a small bottle of the usual spirit for three of us and a bottle of Efes Beer for Sitare. A huge Kangal type of street dog was laying quietly by us and watching the strangers in town.
Sun set from our room window
A light dinner at Heleni's restaurant
Our companion at Heleni's
To tour Cappadocia with your own car and not knowing where you are going and without the knowledge about the surrounding areas, is an impossible task. Typically you use the services of a travel agency with a tour guide and their transportation in mini vans. At first we thought it was a little pricey: around $ 60 per person per day, but then after finishing the first day’s tour we knew that every penny we spent was worth it. Hiro Tour Tourism & Travel Agency had so much to offer and so many things to show, that was difficult to believe we had experienced in one single day.
Bekir, our tour guide picked us up in front of a hotel in Ürgüp along with another Turkish family of four. A very nice couple, with two teenage children of a boy and girl. We immediately made friends with Gökhan, a former professional soccer player who has his own print shop, and his very friendly wife and their very well mannered children. We started travelling on the minibus, which was air conditioned and quite comfortable. We started by stopping in a plateau by the highway,called the ‘“Panorama” for the scenic view of the valleys and fairy chimneys. Later we went to other valleys like Cavusin and Zelve Valley, with homes and churches carved in rocks, often climbing on the soft hills looking like from another planet. There were thousands of tourists arriving with tour buses, mostly countries like Korea and Japan and also some native tourists from all over Turkey. Sitare the outgoing person of us all, immediately found a middle aged American tourist who was living with his Italian girlfriend in Italy, who took our picture for us in front of the caves. There was a lot of police and secret service presence in some areas because some Greek officials and their Ambassador to Turkey were visiting the sites before attending the sermon this evening at the old church in Mustafapaşa.
View from "Panoroma"
Caves in Fairy Valley
With our Tour friends on first day at Pigeon Valley
Taking a little break from sightseeing, Bekir our tour guide asked the driver of the minivan to pull in front of the Ömürlü Ceramic Shop. There we were first taken to a private room with comfortable ‘‘sedir”s, the low seated Ottoman couches, and served Turkish coffee while a pottery artist showed us how pottery and ceramic plates were done from an initial stage. When he asked for a volunteer, as usual Sitare was the one who volunteered and took the stage putting the şalvar, the baggy trousers on top of her shorts. Under the directions of the master, she started spinning the wheel coordınatıng with the pedal under her foot, occasionally dipping both hands into the water bucket and forming the turning art object. The final product was an odd shaped coffee mug. She could not take it home, because the clay was too soft and the next procedure was heating it in the oven before the final touches of polishing and painting was to be done. After the show they took us to their sales galleries, where beautiful ceramic plates, vases, wine carafes and all kinds of other beautiful objects with Ottoman and Turkish desıgns were displayed. They were all so impressive and Sezen almost bought a huge ceramic plate costing about $ 250. After the ceramic shop we stopped at this huge restaurant, looking like in the middle of no where, designed for tourist buses with a capacity probably for over 500 people. There on the second floor, they had two sets of three huge buffet bars. One for meats and fish, second one for vegetables, soups and salads and last one for desserts and bakery items. We had just arrived before the rush and enjoyed the pleasant lunch with our friends for the day.
Sitare taking pottery lessons
Ceramic Master at Omurlu Ceramics
One of Six Buffet Bars at the Restaurant
After lunch we went back to Göreme Valley and climbed up the hills towards the top of the valley. On our way up we went in and out of cave homes, jumping and hiking on the rocks, and marvelling the landscape as well as the wild flowers here and there. We have seen so many valleys and cave cities on this first day that all the names are mixed up in my mind now. Were we in Cavuşin, or Pigeon Valley or the Fairy Valley, I don’t remember the name ? What I recall was that we finally climbed up to the top of a hill to an a open air tea garden on the peak. The little tea garden was built on the flat surface of the hill, with a deck top constructed from brushwood, few tables and chairs, a hammock and a little tea station with a small LPG tank. Zehra, a natıve Cappadocian woman, with bright green eyes, showing older than her age due to the effect of the sun over the years, was the owner operator of the place with her teenage son and their little black puppy named Mahmut. We sampled the fresh flat bread she had baked, sipping our tea under the shade of the roof and watched the amazing landscape with the fairy chimneys and rock formations down in the valley. She told us that her husband was not too much help to her and was spending all his time in the village, often hanging around the cafehouse down there. She had constructed the whole deck and roof of the tea garden by herself and decorated the Kavi Cafe inside the rock formations next to it. Her house was also inside the same cave by the Cafe. The place had no running water and she had to bring water every day from the village down the valley, in big water tanks. She was trying to convince the Mayor of the town to connect water lines to her facilities. I was impressed with the entrepreneur spirit of this Anatolian lady and started taking pictures of her when she leaned towards Ilhan and said:” take one with my big brother Ilhan Abi”, putting her arm over his shoulders. Ilhan who is usually camera shy could not resist her request.
Our next stop was the open air museum of Göreme. Tickets were included in the tour package and after Bekir purchased them we started climbing up to the hills again to the Churches of the Monks and Nuns inside the caves. At one time there were 330 churches in side these rocks and several of them are still intact today. Every little cave had an attendant at the door and it was strictly forbidden to take pictures of the centuries old frescoes on the walls: colorful images of Jesus, Mary and all of the Saints. The most famous of the churches in this area are the Elmali Kilise (Apple Church) with an inside in the form of a cross, the Church of Santa Barbara with it’s symbolic motives and the Serpent Church with it’s fascinating architecture. The area also had a very modern gift shop and cafe combination where we took a little break, had some percolator coffee and I purchased a book about Cappadocia while Sezen and Sitare had their pictures taken in Kaftans, the harem outfits of the Ottoman Palace.
Our tour of the Göreme valley ended with another surprise treat by the tour organizers. Bekir took us to the wine cellars of Turasan, the established producers of quality wines of the region since 1943.There, after visiting the production areas and wine cellars, we were taken to a separate room away from all of the bus tourists and served several wines for tasting. Anatolian wines like Öküz Gözü, Kalecik Karası and Boğazkere, and world classics like Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. Ilhan ended up buying a case of six samplers and I bought a bottle of Misket Domisec, a fruity white wine of the Aegean region, Sitare’s favorite. It was 5 pm when the minibus brought us back to or Cave Art Boutique Hotel.
A tea break at Zehra Baci's Kavi hill top cafe
Zehra Baci, a self made Anatolian entrepreneur with Ilhan
Entrance of the Goreme Open Air Museum
Elmali Church In Goreme
Going into one of the 330 cave churches
Ecumenical Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church Bartholomew's visit
While everybody was taking a shower, I went up the terrace to have a bottle of water when I saw Oya Hanim, the owner operator of the Hotel, all dressed up and getting ready for the big event which was going to take place at the old church in town. The Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was going to conduct a sermon. I knew people were coming all the way from Greece for this event which was considered a pilgrimage and as the editor ofistanbullite.com this was a great opportunity to witness and take pictures of the sermon and his Holliness. Oya Hanım was going to take her car to the to church, so I asked if I can join her, letting my wife know where I was going .The Aios Konstantini -Eleni Greek Orthodox Church is in the marketplace of Mustafapaşa the old Rum (Anatolian Greek) village.The church was abandoned during the 1924 population exchange between Turkey and Greece and looked like no restoration was done since then. We went down the stairs to the Church which was under the street level. The place was already getting full when we arrived and we both went our separate ways inside,looking for seats. I found a seat at the back entrance of the church and started watching the priests in black robes, eagerly waiting for Patriarch by the door. Soon there were no seats left and I volunteered to give my seat to an elderly gentleman who had difficulty in walking as the Patriarch was entering from the door with a cortege of people around him. All three priests greeting him reached out and kissed his hand as he walked towards the table with candles which had Jesus‘s fresco next to it. He leaned and kissed the picture, moving towards where I was standing. Two priests helped him to put a black cloak over his head from the back towards his shoulders and then the ceremonial purple cloak with gold lining. He moved forward touching the old man I had just given my seat, by the shoulders and moved to the pulpit and started delivering his prayers in Greek. After listening to him for few minutes I waved bye to Oya Hanim and returned back to the Hotel. We had one more event scheduled for this long day.
There were not to many restaurants to choose from in the small village of Mustafapasa for dinner and Oya Hanim had suggested Uranus, a restaurant with live shows in Avanos , about 30 kilometers from the Hotel Cave Art. Ilhan called the restaurant and reserved a table for four, for the fixed price menu with all the cold and hot mezes, meat kebab as the main dish ,unlimited spirits and live entertainment for about $ 30 per person. Our tour guide had also volunteered to provide the transportation from and back to the hotel for a fee.In Avanos we arrived again in a place, like we went for lunch today, a huge Las Vegas style building with two restaurants inside.The first one was set with standard tables and a stage for the shows. The second one which we had reservation for was set in an arena form, with the round stage in the middle and stadium like stairs with long desk style tables going up with an isle in the middle .Although we were given the front seats, I felt claustrophobic by the wall which did not have an aisle, but as soon as soon as the shows and music started and servers started bringing mezes and drinks to our desk we were all happy. Two different folklore groups performing dances of several regions of Anatolia entertained us the whole night. There was also an excellent belly dancer who took volunteers from the guests and put on an excellent show. What we realized later on that all the performers were running in between the shows in the long hall way and doing the same show in each restaurant. On the way back to the hotel everybody was tired of the sightseeing and other activities of the long day and ready for a good nights sleep. What we did not know was, that our second day in Cappadocia was going to be even more tiring and eventful.
This morning the driver of the tour van picked us up from our hotel and brought us to Ürgüp where we transferred to a larger minibus. There were ten more tourists in addition to us four, mostly very young people and all from Korea. Our tour guide had also changed, his name was Ahmet and he spoke English with a very heavy accent whom first even I had difficulty understanding. He had learned the language most likely by himself by reading books and pronouncing the words and letters the way they sound in Turkish. But soon after we got used to his pronunciation and I realized that he actually had a good volume of vocabulary, communicated well with the tourists and was very knowledgeable about his subjects. He was a good entertainer too, and tried to teach the tourists about ten Turkish words which they had to repeat after him while we were travelling. Our first stop was on a hill by the pigeon valley at a very scenic spot with gift shops selling artifacts and souvenir items. After fifteen minutes of free time we went back to our Mercedes minibus and headed to Derinkuyu, the biggest Underground city in the area.
Our Tour Van
DERIN KUYU UNDERGROUND CITY
There are a total of 36 known underground cities in Cappadocia, 9 of them are open to public : the biggest being Derinkuyu(deep well), followed by Kaymaklı. The underground cities were used as a safe heaven by the early Christians to hide from their enemies and to practice their religion. However it is believed that much earlier civilizations ,like the Hittites and Phrygians started excavating the underground cities and using the first first or second stories and then later civilizations adding more stories to them as the need arose. The Derinkuyu is eight stories deep, has a ventilation hole with dozens of shafts and is about 70 to 80 meters in length. As the name suggests, there was probably a well at the eighth storey, since the water wells were that deep in this area. Derinkuyu has a 9 km long tunnel going towards Kaymakli but the two are not connected. Typically the first floors under the earth were used as animal shelters, the second one as a kitchen and food storage area, the third and fourth stories as hiding areas . The doors to the hiding areas were closed with a round one piece stone, weighing about half a ton, which could be opened only from the inside. The lower floors usually had meeting rooms, wine cellars and water wells. On the eighth floor of Derinkuyu there is a church in form of cross, in the size of a large room and with eight feet high ceilings.
When we started going down from the entrance to the first story, the tunnel was pretty large and well lid. But as all fifteen of us followed each other one behind the other, the corridors got tighter, at places less than 5 feet in height, and the lights got dimmer. I was telling Sitare to put her hands above her head since we were constantly hitting our heads on the ceiling walls. The traffic going up and coming down obviously could not pass through the same corridor at the same time, so Ahmet our tour guide would yell at the foyer of each corridor:
" 15 coming down there, is anybody coming up.?"
And if there was, we would wait. In the church down at the eighth floor Ahmet demonstrated using Ilhan as a model leaning him to the cross shaped stone arch, how the early believers practiced crucification. In the same church there was a small hole big enough for one person to get in, with no lights inside and another exit hole about twenty feet on the other side of the room. Ahmet' s theory was that this was probably a confession booth. Sezen and I was the only brave ones to go into the hole, crawling on our knees in pitch dark for couple of minutes. After getting out, my thinking was, that the black hole was more likely a place for the monks suffering ritual. Next, we went to another room where Ahmet was explaining about the grave inside the room. I had the camera in my right hand ,hanging from my neck and I was moving forward to take a closer look when my right foot slid and I felt my self in the air falling down. I heard a big “aaahhh“ from the crowd in fear, my right arm hit the edge of the open grave hole and I landed both feet down in the four foot deep grave. Sitare and Ahmet pulled me out of the grave and I told everybody that I was OK, checking the camera which slightly hit the edge as I was falling down. The Canon Rebel was OK too. But then I realized that I had bruised my arm and it was bleeding. I didn't tell this to any body then, we were down on the eighth floor and nothing could be done there. When we went back to the earth level again, I told Sitare about the injury and the tour guide took me to the security station for first aid. What if I had broken my leg down there ?, how would have they taken me out to the earth again ? Probably as they did the miners through a shaft, through the 70 meter deep ventilation hole maybe??
Going down to second floor under earth
In the kitchen
80 meter long ventilation shaft
Sitare going into seventh floor
Ahmet demonstratiing the crucification to Ilhan
The grave Cem fell into and came out with a bleeding arm but the camera in tact
Our next stop was in Selime by the Aksaray province, a high and hilly hard rock area with a green valley and village underneath.There is one of the biggest monasteries on the high point of the region dating back the 8. Century, the Selime Cathedral. The cathedral which has two sets of columns and ten rooms inside with frescoes dating back to 11.Century, was also used as a military watch point not only by the Christians but also the Selçuk Turks in the centuries to follow. Sezen and Ilhan decided not to go up the rocky hill, but we started climbing on the hard surface all the way up to the Cathedral. Going down from top was more difficult than climbing up and required lot of concentration to prevent sliding and falling down. We met with our tour group down at the valley afterwards and went to the outdoors restaurant for lunch. The restaurant was in a camping ground by a little river with ducks swimming in it, a little bridge on top, and willow trees all around the area. The menu consisted of fresh baked country bread, bulgur pilaf, çoban salad, watermelon and sea bass baked in a clay dish. And of course Turkish coffee or çay at the end. It was yumm...
Up there on top of Selime
Unlus decided not to climb up
Coming down was more difficult
The so called ODA (Room) over village of Selime
Lunch time at the village of Selime
The other major place to visit on our itinerary today was the Ihlara Valley here in the Aksaray province, very close to the village of Selime. One of the most beautiful canyons in the world, Ihlara runs 14 kilometers in a rocky train between steep hills which are 100-150 meters in height. The Melendiz stream flows through the valley, merging to the Uluırmak (Great River) in Aksaray and eventually running into the Tuz Gölu (Salt Lake) between Ankara and Izmir.
Our minivan brought us to the top of the valley where we started walking down the road to the front entrance of the park. Scanning our museum passes on the scanner we went in and started walking down the wooden stairs from the highest point of the Canyon to the valley, where the Melendiz stream was flowing. At some points of the 400 steps going down to the river there were panoramic observation decks, where we stopped and took pictures of the canyon. Down in the valley we passed over a small bridge and went to other shore and started hiking to the midpoint of the 8 km long walkable trail. We walked up the hills and rocks by the river between acacia, willow and walnut trees, surrounded between yellow and blue wild flowers. Birds were singing on the trees, ducks were swimming in the river and we were following each other in a single row.
There were once 105 churches hidden in the Ihlara Canyon, most of them had disappeared under debris and erosion of centuries long neglect. Here early Christians were practicing their religion safely from all enemies and contrary to the monks, they were living by the river in communes together with other people. St Gregory known for his interpretation of the Holy Trinity, which was accepted at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., had lived here at the Ihlara Canyon. There are still 15 churches inside the rocks with beautiful frescoes; some with traces of oriental art, others with Byzantine touches. Among these churches, we visited the Ağaçaltı Church, or Church of Daniel Pantanassa, where Ahmet our tour guide gave us a very detailed information about the frescoes on it’s dome : Jesus’s Ascension to heaven, all of the Saints, the Annunciation, Baptism and Assumption of Virgin Mary to the heaven. Getting out of the church we kept walking down and then back climbing again by the river, on the rocks , off the hılls, and so on.... At this point everybody was getting tired from the whole day's activities, the temperature was reaching 90 F, although the humidity level was comfortable. Ahmet, who was blamed for the long walk, grabbed Sitare’s heavy handbag in an act of gesture and volunteered to carry it for the rest of the way. We stopped at the midpoint of the trail at a rest area and tea garden right by the Melendez stream. We enjoyed refreshments there, sitting on a low Ottoman sedir, watching ducks swimming in the water and later walked to tour our minivan, waiting for us in the parking lot.
Ihlara Vadisi (Valley)
Agacalti Church in Ihlara Valley 9-11 th Century
Hiking in the valley
Pigeon houses in Ihlara Valley
Last stop at Ortahisar
The day was fınally coming to an end but we still had about an hour’s drive back to Ürgüp and then back to our hotel. On the way back we stopped at another panoramic spot by Ortahisar, taking some final photos and selfies in Cappadocia we went back to the minivan. But we were not done yet. Our last stop was at a marble and gemstones shop, where a stone carver demonstrated how the stones were cut, formed and treated from a piece of rock. When he finished polishing the little egg figure he worked on, the sales lady asked our group of fourteen if anybody knew what the word " Cappadocia" meant. She was going to give the little marble egg on the pedestal to who ever answered her question right. Without hesitation I answered :
"The land of beautiful Horses. "
Congratulating me for the right answer she handed over the little gift.
"Once in a while your knowledge brings some benefits" said Sitare.
We had already planned tonights activity and dinner from a day before. Since we were going to leave next morning for Bodrum and our friends parting for Eskişehir, we wanted stay at the hotel and asked Oya Hanım to prepare some vegetable dishes and mezes for us. Oya Hanım, a master chef prepared not only delicıous mezes but also some meat delicacies too. We filled our plates from the Buffet Bar she had prepared and went out to the terrace and sat at the table on the balcony, overseeing the small village Mustafapaşa. We ordered a small bottle of Rakı and for the first time in her life Sitare joined us drinking the anise spirit instead of her regular glass of Cabernet. Oya Hanım had put soft Greek music on the DVD player and as she was dancing to the melody in the kitchen.
Stop at a marble and gem stone shop
Sitare and Sezen with Oya Hanim
CLICK FOR INFO FOR THE CAVE ART HOTEL
We left Ürgüp bright and early next morning to drive to the airport in Kayseri. İt's an hours drive from Ürgüp and as usual Sezen was on the driver’s seat again .Kayseri is one of the fastest growing industrial provinces in Turkey with a population of over 1.2 million ın Central Anatolia.The city is built on the plains of Mount Erciyes, a distinct volcano 3916 meters in height. The province is well known for sports activities like skiing, trekking, rafting, balloon riding, has one of the most modern soccer stadiums in Turkey and was one of the host cities during the World Basketball Championships three years ago. Too bad, we could not allocate more time here to visit the city due to our limited days in Turkey. We kissed our friends goodbye at the airport, thanking them for their hospitality and help during our wonderful stay in Eskişehir and trip to Cappadocia. İlhan did not make a firm commitment but Sezen told us that she was definitely coming this September to Columbus for a visit.
Our destination was Bodrum, the famous resort city on the Aegean Sea