Cappadoccia - The Land of Beautiful Horses

 Arriving into this fairytale city was amazing.  The landscape is like something out of a Star Wars movie, although Star Wars was never filmed here, as some people believe.  It was actually filmed in Tunisia - a little tid bit for you.  What was filmed there was Ghost Rider 2 (For all those Nicholas Cage fans and assuming he’s in the sequal?)  Anyroads, anyroads....... The whole place is actually hard to describe and as one of the guide books says the pictures just don’t do it justice.

Under recommendations from Madd’s friend, Lara, we stayed at The Fairy Chimney Inn at the top of the hill in Goreme, which is a town in the region of Cappadoccia. A few of the initial thoughts from the crew was that the building was that it was: 

Interesting

Magical 

Ingenious

Totes amazeballs!

This was the downstairs bedroom that Lu and I shared.... it was about 5-10 degrees cooler down there and made it quite cozy to sleep in.

This was the communal lounge area

Complete with musical instrument section

And the original door that was used to in front of the doorway.

We weren't quite sure what this area was for, but some thoughts was that it was perhaps a child's play area, or an area where they would sacrifice the babies?  We're not sure. 

A walk through to the upstairs bedroom, otherwise known as the 3rd bedroom

Stairs up to the upstairs bedroom and the bathroom

This bedroom had an amazing view from the bed straight out the window

The bathroom..... I love how they've carved out little shelves for the soap and shampoos.

It was very cozy, but going up all the stairs to the toilet at night and having to do any facial work in the tiny palm sized mirror on the wall over the bed was a bit primitive!

The whole town is carved out of soft type of rock that is easily chiseled.  The buildings used to be homes for the locals, and some still are, but now they are mostly hotels, restaurants and shops.

The owner is a woman called Gulshan (spelt phonetically).  She is the only woman in Cappadoccia to own and run a hotel.  She was very vocal about not caring for the macho moustacho men in the town, but something tells me that they might have had a strong dislike for her aswell!  She was an excellent cook and we were treated to traditional Turkish fare from her kitchen.  Sometimes we didn’t quite know what we were eating, but it smelt and tasted fantastic!  

Gulshan had a massive dog called Panda who was only a puppy when Lara stayed there previously.  He became our protector, walking us to our room and greeting us in the morning and walking us down to breakfast.

  He only eats Turkish human food and apparently doesn’t like Turkish people - especially the macho moustachio men!  She also had two tabby cats that were identical, except one was nice and one was a total bitch who would swipe you every time you walked by.  

On our first morning we were awoken at about 6am to the sound of “Kachshhhhh” right outside our house and on inspection, this is what we were presented with:

Mehaba (hello) Cappadoccia!

The balloons go up every morning.  There can sometimes be up to 160 at one time.  It was absolutely magical!  This is what we had come here for.  It was Madeline’s dream for her 40th birth year to experience floating over the hills and valleys of this amazing place. 

Our tour guide was Osman, spelt ‘Oguzhan’ (how hard is Turkish?) and he was so fantastic.  He was hilarious and not only cracked some of his own jokes but he got all of ours and was able to join in which wins your points every time - even if he was only born in 1986 and was too young for a lot of our references.  He was incredibly knowledgable, not only about Turkey, its history, geography, politics and religion, but he also knew all about all other countries, including Australia!  He was telling us things we already knew, or should have known, but he also schooled us about a few unknown trivial facts.

Osman started out by showing us the ancient fairy chimney rock formations.

 

Which we were all pretty excited to see

Apparently back in the day the water level was up to where the light coloured line is and the caps on the top were out of the water and exposed to the elements which caused them to be darker in colour and harder.  The part at the bottom was softer and so it was possible to carve.

This couple at the back of the photo were hilarious, doing all sorts of poses and running up slopes and filming each other as they flew down - almost rivalled Madeline!  Almost.

Madds had curled herself into this little hole in the wall, just to see if she could fit and this lady followed in after us and told her granddaughter to take her photo, then walked over and climbed in herself.

Anything you can do!

  

Osman took us to this fabulous place for lunch, right on the water.  It was great food, we learned a few more words in Turkish from the waiters, who are always willing to help you out with your pronunciation.

Apparently after you've had a Turkish coffee you turn it upside down and leave it for 10 minutes and then you can read the patterns inside the cup, like reading tea leaves. 

Madeline's day was going to be a bit of a mess!

Osman showed us the some fantastic look outs and told story after story about the mind boggling history.  We did a short hike through Imagination Valley where all the rock formations took on different personas.  We all saw different shapes in them.

Leo, the lion

 

Thumbs up and if you look closely you can see King Kong sitting on Madd's butt 

My foot..... and half sized toes!

  

A face and a rabbit without any ears - like the Lindt bunny

Our next stop was to a pottery place where we were shown how they use the old fashioned foot wheel to spin the clay and then...

I was allowed to have a turn!  I Harry Highpantsed it up and span that wheel. 

I needed a lot of help from my friend, or Patrick Swayzee, as I liked to call him as we unromantically re-enacted the famous scene from Ghost.  He didn’t know what he was re-enacting, but he was a good sport about it.

I made a fabulous bowl, and told our pottery guide that he may keep it as my gift to him.  He said that if he managed to see it that he would give me 10 free pottery lessons.  I think that's a fair deal.

These are two of my favourite pottery patterns that you can see all around Turkey.

This one is the Tree of Life

And this one is the Whirling Dervishes