Cappadocia has been in our travel bucket list for so long. We finally had the chance to visit this year. It took 10 hours of driving from our previous destination, Selcuk Izmir. We Arrived a bit late at night around 10 pm so we couldn’t see much at that time. We checked in at the Hotel called Alp Stone Concept Hotel, located in Avanos Cappadocia. Originally, we wanted to stay at the cave hotel in Goreme but we needed to follow the other participants so we stayed in there instead. The hotel was okay, had a lot of cave-like features and was located not too far from the main attractions we were about to visit so we were happy with that.
We didn’t have it in our budget to ride a hot air balloon. Our budget was going to be used for accommodation and food for another week in Turkey. We can always visit again in the future so skipping the hot air balloon for now was fine for us. Ayu is afraid of heights anyway and wasn’t easy to convince her to ride it hahaha. Even though we weren’t going to ride it, we planned to wake up in the morning to catch up with the magical view when the balloons started to fly. So at 6 am in the morning we, and two other friends, called the Taxi from the hotel to take us to Goreme, it took only 5 minutes to get there. We only needed to pay TL 75 for the taxi and the driver also waited for us for around 45 minutes. It was a pretty good deal.
As you can imagine, the view was beautiful. Hundreds of hot air balloons were flying. We might not be able to show you the best pictures for now since we weren’t taking pictures from up above but we were still able to take beautiful pictures. 😊
In the afternoon, the itinerary was to visited Pigeon Valley and Uchisar Castle and later, before going back to the hotel, we visited the Underground City. In just about 10 minutes from our hotel, we arrived at Pigeon Valley. It earned its name from the countless man made dovecotes (Pigeon Houses) that have been carved into the soft volcanic tuff. The valley is located between Goreme and Uchisar. There was a little souvenir shop if you wanted to buy small gifts to bring home.
source: Mr. Danny’s drone 😁
After a couple of shots in Pigeon Valley, we continued our journey to the next stop, Uchisar. Uçhisar, which is situated on the edge of Goreme National Park, is dominated by a 60-metre-high castle mountain. It is visible over a wide distance and has the form of a large cylindrical tower. The top of the Uchisar Castle provides a magnificent panorama of the surrounding area. It served as residential areas in Byzantine times. Originally, around 1,000 people lived in the castle but it is no longer inhabited today. The landscape is also marked by the fairy chimney scattered through it. The fairy chimneys of Uchisar were hollowed out and used as graves during the Roman period.
Source: Tripadvisor
After spending time in Uchisar, we drove to the Underground City. Built to protect the ancient inhabitants, the underground cities allowed thousands of people to live their lives in total secrecy. It is believed that the underground cities were initially built by the Phrygians during the 8th through 7th centuries BC, who carved their living spaces into the region’s soft volcanic rock. Later on, during the Roman era and the replacement of the Phrygian language with Greek, then Christian inhabitants continued to work on the underground cities adding their own cultural and religious necessities such as chapels and Greek inscriptions. They continued to protect their citizens around 14th century when Christians needed a protection from the threat of the Mongolians during the assaults, and once again during the Ottoman era. Even during the 20th century, the caves allowed for people to save themselves from the Ottoman Empire until about 1923. The underground cities were completely abandoned and then not rediscovered until 1963, when a resident found a strange room behind a wall inside his house.
There are 36 underground cities in Cappadocia and the biggest ones that you can visit are Kaymakkali and Derinkuyu, but during the pandemic, many underground cities are temporarily closed to the public. So we could only visit a smaller one that only had three floors. It contained stables at the first floor, the second floor was for the churches and the baptism area. The third floor contained most of the storage and resources in the underground compound and also held other important things such as wine or oil presses, and kitchens. At the exit gate of the city, there was a small shop that sold gifts and souvenirs.
Once we were done exploring the underground city, we went back to the hotel to rest so we could continue our journey on the next day visiting the ceramic factory and Ankara before we finally departed to Istanbul.
To be continued..
Wander and Explore 