Cappadocia
Despite the early hour, things went surprisingly smoothly this morning getting from our hotel in Istanbul to the airport for our flight to Kayseri. Our book warns the drive can take as long as an hour and a half, but at the time of the morning we are going, and on a Saturday to boot, it is over in about 35 minutes, putting me at the airport the recommended 2 hours before my flight for what may be the first time ever.
With plenty of time to spare, I try to grab a little shut-eye at the gate, but waiting along with us is the Turkish equivalent of our Sammy – a boy with only two volume settings – loud and louder. He wants to say goodbye to every plane that leaves, and I think is worried that all the way across the tarmac the pilot might not be able to hear him.
We are flying Pegasus Air, which is the Southwest of Turkey, and like Southwest packs the passengers in pretty tight. No frills to speak of, but the plane is quite new though and the flight pretty short, so overall a totally painless experience.
Kayseri is one of two airports in Cappadocia, and is the busier of the two, even though it is the furthest from the places most tourists come to see. We are ultimately headed for a place called Goreme, about an hour away, and according to the information desk, can get there by taxi (expensive) or by taking a total of three buses (painful). As we are talking through the options, a Japanese couple asks us if we are also going to Goreme and if we would be interested in splitting the cab fare. Door to door service at half the price is a pretty easy choice, particularly when the other passengers don’t really speak English, reducing the risk of having to engage in idle chit chat.
The main draw of Cappadocia is the surreal desert landscape, populated with thousands of towering rock formations carved from the volcanic deposits. For millennia, these towers served as the homes for the regions inhabitants, who tunneled and carved directly into the rock to create entire communities. Many of these “fairy chimneys” (an early legend was that the towers and rooms within them could only have been made by fairies) have been converted to hotels, and a tourist “must do” experience is to stay in one.
We booked three nights in one of these caves on Expedia while in Istanbul, so after arriving in our cab, we’re anxious to see what all the fuss is about. Alarms start going off though as the desk clerk (who is also the bellman and concierge) repeatedly checks his state of the art reservation system, flipping the pages back and forth a few times and asking us if we have our booking number. As it turns out, they aren’t really that diligent about letting services like Expedia know when they are out of rooms, so have continued taking reservations and are now overbooked. After some discussion, we settle on taking a non-cave room for the first night, and then moving into a “deluxe” cave room for the remaining two nights.
Now this particular place we chose because it was listed as an “Expedia Pick”, and upon cross checking with Tripadvisor, we found it had reasonable reviews. Walking into the room we ask ourselves what those people have been smoking. Over the years, I’ve stayed in worse, but not by much, and probably not with a very unhappy traveling companion in tow. As some special extra touches, we soon come to learn that they only turn the heat on for a few hours in the evening, and that the bathroom window needs to stay open all the time to vent the sewer smell coming up through the drain.
The heater of course, wouldn’t be an issue if it weren’t freezing outside…in May…in Turkey. What ever happened to global warming? If I ever see Al Gore, I swear I’m going to hit him with my shoe (or preferably, one of the sandals that I brought all the way over here but haven’t been able to use). Nasty bedspread aside, it takes all the smooth talking I can muster to cajole Angela from the bed, where she has cocooned herself, coat still on, trying to warm up.
As it is late in the day, our options for activities are limited, but a short walk up the road is the Goreme Open Air Museum. This is on our list to see, so today seems like a good day to get that out of the way. To our pleasant surprise, the sun has started to break out, and combined with the uphill hike has made the temperature tolerable.
The museum is really just a collection of churches and associated rooms (like kitchens, bedrooms, and so on) carved into the rocks by early Christians, who used the caves as a place to hide from the ruling Romans, who had a tendency to feed Christians to the lions. In their day, the ceiling and walls of the churches were covered with colorful frescoes, many of which remain and are in surprisingly good condition.
As churches go, these are quite small, so to see them you enter in packs of 20 people or so, listen to a guide describe the scenes depicted, and then exit to make room for the next group. We’re not part of a tour, so its luck of the draw as to what language the guide speaks when we are in any given church. In some cases we hear the full story in English and find it quite interesting, while in others, we try to cobble together bits and pieces from whatever words in German and French sound like English and then make up the rest.
Afterwards, we wander around the tiny downtown looking for a place to eat and a grocery store to pick up a few things to have on hand in our room. To our indescribable disappointment, noodle soup, our comfort food when on the road, is nowhere to be found in Turkey, and we return to the hotel empty handed. Its dark and cold, by the time we get back, so are thankful the heat has been on in our absence. Nevertheless, we both err on the conservative side and opt for full dress sleeping attire before plopping down on the raggedy mattress for the night.