Tuesday 11/20/2007- Friday 11/23/2007:
We landed to be greeted by not the friendliest people in the world…in Turkey. After checking our luggage for our next flight to Kayseri, we waited for Jeanne by our gate. Katie was excited to find an HSBC, and after reading our (outdated) guidebook, we decided to take 1 million Turkish Lira out of the ATM. We have arrived….we are millionaires. Haha… when Katie went to see the set money withdrawls…. But sadly, they were more like US dollar denominations, so she picked one in the middle….
Confused, we logged into the free internet and realized that the old Turkish lira was changed and pretty much had 6 zeros taken off…so now the exchange rate was 1 US dollar= 1.17 Turkish Lira. After a $30 lunch and using the web, Jeanne found us, and we all caught up before catching our 18:20 flight to the center of Turkey.
We boarded the plane and say next to a bank officer from Turkey practicing his English with us. He was very nice and taught us some Turkish. We asked him to write down how to say “thank you”…. So he wrote “Teshekkur” on the air sickness bag. Precious.
Once we collected our bags, we found a gentleman with a sign “Jeanne Williams” for our complimentary hour ride to Urgup. We arrived to Gamirasu Cave Hotel to be greeted by very hospitable staff with recommendations for our visit in Cappadocia. We found out that our hot air balloon ride was a ‘go’ for tomorrow, and our pick up would be at 5:25am. So needless to say, we had a light dinner and hit the hay to get ready for our big flight tomorrow!
On Wednesday, we had some problems waking up for our hot air balloon ride, since we were sleeping in a cave. Kapadokya Balloon picked us up, along with one of our other passengers and took us about 45 minutes into Goreme. After having some tea/coffee and cookies (for breakfast), we loaded into vans and made our way to the take off spot.
We watched as the crew of about 5 people used fans to first get the balloons inflated. After they were about ½ way, they used the hot air from a propane tank. We had about 6 full propane tanks for our flight. Our 6 passengers boarded and we had a nice, slow lift off. The views were incredible and we went up to 7,100 feet (it was cooooooold!). We met three very nice guys from Istanbul, including the ‘Britney Spears’ of Turkey … at least this is what his manager called him. They were really nice and gave us a bunch of ideas for our next stop to Istanbul. After about an hour of fly time on our ‘perfect’ weather day, we had Turkish mimosas and coffee cake.
After taking naps at the cave, we hired a driver for the second half of the day to show us around Cappadocia. Hussian, or as Jeanne and I called him “Sadam” or “Mohammad”… gave us a great tour of the area with stopping at the underground city, touring an old cave village and having to tell many of the locals “no thank you” to their homemade soganli dolls (still working in the off season!). After our tour of town, we went into Urgup for dinner at we’re pretty sure was the hotel’s brothers restaurant…because ½ of our hotel was also eating there. Minus Dermot getting his “Roki” spilled all over him (which is Turkish liquor that smells like black liquorish… eeeww), we had a lovely meal and even had our hotel pick us up in town for free! We played a little cards (Shitzekoff, thanks to Sarah, Dave and Doc), had some of Jeanne’s engagement gift to us (Turkish sweet wine) and we were off to bed!
We took advantage of the dark cave and slept in a bit today…. Afterall it was Thanksgiving in the states! Little did we know, when we started our tour, Katie’s friend Carla was in labor! Congrats to the O’Briens on their thanksgiving arrival of Connor James! Little did we know, we celebrated with hiring our driver, Hussian, and our tour guide Ramzie to discover the history and wonders of ancient Cappadocia. At first, we were nervous that we hired a game show host to teach us about Turkey for the day… but we realized Ramzie’s excitement and passion for his home town really came through with this 25+ years of knowledge on the history and culture of Cappadocia. We started our tour at Turasan Winery where we tasted several wines, along with mingled with the locals (who shared their peanuts)… next we visited the UNESCO Goreme Open Air Museum, which was a Christian monastery from the 9th century. Ramzie taught us about many churches (he even asked if we were ‘churched out’ as his English was incredible….) as well as what life was like as a young monk trained in the Christian ways.
We made a pit stop for shish kebabs, while Hussian and Ramzie went to the Mosque. Afterwards, we visited another monestary cave dwelling, which was for hermits training in the ways of God. One cave even has extra carvings for a monk to chain himself to the cave, since he was in fear of betraying his oath and leaving the monastery. We also learned about why many cave homes were abandoned now a-days… and we found that if you do not have money to repair your cave home, the government will build you a new house in town. However, many caves, like where we were staying were abandoned, but re-purchased by wealthier people who were able to renovate. Dermot and Katie found out that their cave suite was once the stables.
After our brains were full with great Turkish history and culture, we headed back for “Thanksgiving” dinner. Our dinner was not Turkey, mashed potatoes and cranberry (we are drooling writing this) but we did have Turkish Pasta... and tomato soup. We settled our bill and got packed up to head into Istanbul in the morning.
It was our third day with our driver Hussian on the way back to Kaysari airport. We were surprised to find the bus stopping to pick up two women, which we later learned were Hussian’s family. They offered us something steaming from their hand, so we took it…and ate it. They ended up being potatoes….FRESH from the ground, dirt and all. They didn’t speak any English, but they were very sweet to share their breakfast with us. We grabbed our hour long Turkish flight to Istanbul without any problems, and we were excited for some cosmopolitan living!