Tour of Turkey

Day 6:  Cappadocia to Beysehir

When we sat down to upload our pictures from today, Jason had forgotten that all of it was in one day!  We did so much…

It all started with a balloon ride over the region.  This was the most expensive part of our trip, but it was a once in a lifetime experience.  The hot air balloon would skim just past all of these rocks and at one point, Jade an I reached out and touched the tops of trees as we drifted past.  This landscape was amazing from the ground, but from the air it was incredible.

Our town of Goreme.  We stayed here.

Look at how close we get.

Our shadow.

Champagne after.

After our balloon ride, we ate some breakfast at the hotel, checked out and moved along to see some sights as we traveled to our next destination.  The first stop was an entire underground city.  Apparently there were 16, of which 6 are still accessible and we went to the largest one.  It goes 8 floors down through a series of tunnels that have rolling boulder doors to close behind you.  The purpose of these cities was to hide from invading forces and it was filled with everything from common rooms to schools, to baptismal holes, wineries, churches, water wells, graves, you name, they had it.  I was scared because it was a quite a labyrinth down there with only some of the rooms lit and Jade wanted to explore even the unlit ones.  If she turned down the wrong one of the over 1,000 rooms I had no idea how to find her.  She didn’t like it, but I made us all stay together. The tunnels and stairways were all so short that you had to hunch over to pass through. What an eerie but cool place. 

8 stories deep ventilation shaft.

school

After driving some more, we stopped for lunch at this neat little tourist trap that let you eat on the water.  I had some fish caught from the river and served to me whole,

…then we drove down the actual silk road.  We remarked that caravans traveling would have been bored out of their minds because there was nothing around for as far as the eye could see, and it all looked the same to us.  We knew our next stop was going to be the remains of the Sultanhan Caravansaray, too, just like a real caravan would have anticipated.  The Seljuk Turks knew there was money to be made on the silk road, so wealthy Turks had these buildings made about a days trek from one another all along this road.  Caravans would stop and rest for the night here.  This one is from the 13th century and is the best preserved and largest of them all.

We made our way to our final destination, passing some sunflower fields,

...and made it to the small town of Beysehir, where my parents are from.  We checked into a small hotel and went up to the neighborhood they were from.  We couldn’t get into my grandmother’s house, but we could walk around the gardens.  It all seemed so much smaller than I remembered.  I knocked on her next door neighbor’s door and she was so happy to see us.  She took us to the cemetery to see my grandmothers’ and my uncle’s graves and told me that no-one that I knew from my visits to see my grandmother when I was a kid was still around.  Sad that it’s changed so much, but it was nice to show Jade and Jason where my family came from. 

In the center of town, by the lake, there was a festival going on, and to Jade's delight, Turkish pop star Emre was performing - he was terrible, so we had dinner while we walked the grounds and eventually went back to our room for the night. 

Tomorrow we head to the Mediterranean for the beach part of our trip