Cappadocia is famous for its natural rock tower formations, dubbed "fairy chimneys". The thing that makes it especially interesting is that people have actually hollowed them out and used them as houses, even to this day. Naturally, the first thing we did was stop at a good vantage point so we could have a look:
After that, we drove into the town, which is called Goreme, and had a bit of a walk around. It didn't take that long, as the town wasn't that large, but it had a nice feel to it, and more than one bar! We finished up at a bar called Fatboy's (which ended up being a predictable location for our tour leader! ;) ), and decided to stay on for dinner after we'd had a drink. After dinner, we made the somewhat questionable decision to play Risk (which I'd never played before). It was fun, but in a funny way more than anything else, as fatigue and a decent amount of alcohol turned the game mostly into a shambles. Those of us that were still in the game after a while decided to give the win to our tour leader (who was winning), and call it a night. :)
The next morning, we went for a walk to the Valley of Love, with our tour leader refusing to say why it was called that until we got there. It was a nice, relatively short walk, and we got to see a lot more of the towers up close. This shot of two stand-out ones explains how the valley got its name (some things just don't change no matter where you go, apparently):
*Ahem* Moving right along, we walked through the valley a bit more, and were then left to our own devices by our leader, who pointed out the direction of the Open Air Museum for us. We decided to go there, seeing as we were close-ish anyway, although ended up discovering that it was further away than we'd been led to believe. This was not made any better when we asked someone else for directions, and were told 300-400 metres, which turned out to be more like 1km! This, and other experiences with distances led us to believe that perhaps there was perhaps a certain amount of underestimation applied in Turkey, in general!
The museum was good when we finally got there. It was basically a number of older houses and churches that had been hollowed out of rock formations. There was some beautiful artwork, although funnily enough, some of the places had what looked more like kids' drawings! The best guess was that it was outline sketching for work in progress that was never finished.
Need a table and seats? No need to build them, just carve them out!
After the museum, we stopped in briefly at another church we'd seen on the way up, which once again had some very impressive artwork:
Quad Biking
The next major activity was later in the afternoon, and one that I'd definitely been looking forward to: quad biking! I'd never done it before, but figured it was going to be fun. We'd all decided to do it, and after getting our helmets and choosing our bikes, we were given a very quick, mostly comprehensible driving tutorial, which, roughly translated, consisted of "this is the accelerator, these are the brakes, and this is how you switch it off". Emboldened by our now-advanced knowledge, we headed straight out into the streets of Goreme, and on into the countryside.
My biggest problem to start with was the accelerator, which was actually fairly sensitive, but I got the hang of it and the other basics after a few minutes. My next problem was going up hills, as I had no idea just exactly how much of an angle the bike could go at without tipping over, esp. given that the paths we were going on weren't exactly even! It turned out that the answer was "lots", and I got used to it after a while.
It was a lot of fun riding through the countryside, with the occasional stop to take photos of either the chimneys or the views in the distance. The only nervous bit for me was when my travelling buddy didn't show up for quite a while, which had me wondering if she was okay. As it turned out she'd tipped her bike over after going into the side of the path and then hitting a large rock, but was fortunately largely unhurt, outside of some bruises and maybe a scratch or two.
Our final stop before heading back into town was a nice, high up viewpoint, with the sun starting to set. We were given some very nice cheese, bread, and red wine (which was much better than that cheap stuff we'd had back in Nigde!), and enjoyed the view for a while. One glass of wine didn't hurt my driving skill too much apparently as I had a great time riding back, and found myself wishing that I could do it again now that I was more used to it.
Before I go on, here are some photos of it all:
Driving on what were basically dirt paths for most of the ride meant that we were all covered in fine, light dust when we got back into town. The operators cleaned some of the worst of it off us with a high-pressure airgun, but it was still definitely wash time! We went back to the hotel and got cleaned up a bit, then headed off to a restaurant for what was unfortunately going to be our last proper dinner together. The food was really nice, and we sat on cushions in a covered outside area which had a really nice atmosphere. The highlight of the evening was the exchanging of our tacky gifts. Near the beginning of the trip, our leader had told us that everyone needed to buy another random group member a tacky gift for no more than $3 US along the way. I'd found mine: a really tacky pink watch with what can only be described as the Middle-Eastern version of Barbie on it, back in Damascus. The gift I was given can really only be properly explained with a photo!
We headed off to the bar afterwards, with all of us sporting our new accessories (if you ask me, I think I got the worst end of the deal :P ). Then it was back to the hotel and to bed, before our long overland haul to Istanbul, which included an overnight train.
Goreme to Istanbul
Our journey to Istanbul ended up involving 4 different kinds of transport. We started off by getting on to a bus in the early afternoon for a few hours, followed by a short journey on an underground railway, and then had a longish walk to get to the train station, where we boarded our overnight train after having dinner while we waited for it to arrive. Our cabin was cramped, but seemingly okay, and after we'd squeezed our luggage down under the seats/beds, we headed off to the bar car (naturally). We had a good time sitting around drinking and chatting, and were served by a guy who really seemed to be a salesman when it came to asking us if we wanted more drinks! (He also had a very memorable black pleather tie.) My travel buddy and I were also introduced to the tour leader for our next trip, who happened to be on the train with her own group. She seemed nice, but was clearly very tired, as were we!
I'd like to say that we all slept well on the train, but that just wouldn't be true. I slept okay, but was woken up in steady stages by the stops the train was making, finally fully coming to around an hour before we were arrived. Some of the others did much worse, being kept awake by the noise and by the stops, which had apparently been happening all through the night. It was therefore a somewhat bleary group of us that finally stumbled off the train and made our way out the station to the ferry terminal for the last leg of our trip. The ferry was quite late due to the festival following the end of Ramadan. When it arrived, there was a high school-style free-for-all push to get on!
The ferry crossing was short, and we ended up in the heart of Istanbul. Along the way, I snapped a shot of the train station, which looked nice, as well as a rather cute, funny boat:
We got off the ferry and walked up to a hotel which had a couple of day rooms for us to freshen up in before we went our separate ways. We had one last breakfast together, and said our goodbyes. I had my usual feeling that I was going to miss the people I'd been travelling with, despite the relatively short length of time we'd spent together (my standing record is 5 days!). After a quick freshen up, my travel buddy and I headed off to find our next hotel, which was also the starting place for our next tour. No rest for us, as the introductory meeting for it was that evening!
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