Istanbul Day 5 - arriving in Capadoccia!
The flight was pretty quick - 3 hours. I read some of my book, The Sibling Effect, which I heard about on a TED talk... It's ok.
Before we landed we had time for a small lunch on the plane - perfect snack size before descending into Kayseri. We had arranged for a private car because we figured we would be sleepy and the ride from Kayseri to Goreme (all in the Central Anatolian region) was 1 hour. I fell asleep (again) in the van. Our driver, Selvac, pointed out the fifth largest mountain in Turkey, and the largest in the region. Mt. Erciyes summits at 4000 meters and is a retired volcano (last eruption ~300BC). We had a magnificent view of it coming back to the Kayseri Airport later.
One hour and one nap later we arrived at Goreme, FULL of fairy chimneys all around! Every hotel, home, restaurant, spa was housed by a space carved into the post-lava formations by ancient humans (with really big muscles and a lot of ambition and perseverance). The roundness of domes was perfect. The straighteness of corners was clearly intentional. Our room must have been updated slightly but the walls were bare solid rock. Retained cool temperatures when it was hot hot hot out, and created a pitch dark sleeping environment. When we pulled the curtains closed, we slept like babies in a cave. Of course, when we drew them, we had spectacular views of the other cave formations near and far.
We walked to the Open Air Museum. It is a series of caves on the very top of a steep hill. After a series of early war periods (like 7th cent.), Christianity prevailed in this region and monks made a monestery at this place in Goreme. They built a community and the monks transformed these caves into dozens of "churches" (one cave per church, consisting of only an apsis in a 7x7 space). Financed by community leaders, they were able to excavate and create impressively precise round domes and apses. The remains of frescoes are amazingly still visible, though many are hard to make out. Each cave had its own images of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the last supper, apostles, and one even had a depiction of Jesus standing beside the church's financier (the human ego!). "No camera, no photo!"
The Dark Church was recently restored (I think I read somewhere that the region has only been a tourist hotspot since it got a bunch of funding in the 1980's), and it's intact / restored frescoes were amazingly clear and showed the stunning scenes that once were in the neighboring churches. How could these be from over 1000 years ago!!!
I saw the first "evil eye tree," not sure the story behind tying it to trees but the evil eye itself is everywhere to ward off evil spirits. Less of a good v. Evil... More like a "evil eye right back atcha," according to the guide book we have.
And got my first souvenirs at this third generation potter's shop- Deniz Seramiks.
Him doing an demo for us on his grandfather's old potting wheel. "This is only for demo." He actually trains women and teaches them how to make the gorgeous traditional pieces and they do them on electric ones like we did in my ceramics class. I thought Joe might be into all the enterprising we have seen here.
Dinner that night at Seten Restaurant. What a hike! But gorgeous gorgeous views, utterly romantic. Sunset started as we wrapped up dinner, we speed walked to the lookout point near our hotel and caught just the end of it. A pair of Chinese girls dressed reall my fashionably ( Alex would probably disagree, ha) were posing for each other. We asked them to take pictures of us. The girl was great. "1,2,3. OK. 1,2,3. No that was bad. Do it again. Ok. Change pose. Ok. Change pose. Ok. One more pose."
(This was a selfie.)
Back to the room and in bed by 9 for the 4:15am hot air balloon shuttle bus. WHOHOOO
Comments