Day 310 - 27 Apr ‘24 - Istanbul, day two. Thirteen-and-a-half hours after they went to sleep, Alex and Abi woke up. For Dan and I, it had been slightly less, at just 11, but that was still a long time.
“We needed to have our relaxing beach time now,” Dan said as he got dressed, “instead of sightseeing Istanbul, then we’d be up and raring to go!”
We didn’t leave our apartment until after 11am, with our first stop an ATM machine a few minutes’ walk away. When Abi and I sat down on a bench to wait, a man from within the shop next door, came out with two plastic cups of water for us. Then, when he saw us hand the cups to Dan and Alex to share, he went back in and got two more - so kind!
We walked to a nearby-ish train station, and bought four Istanbulkarts, which were transportation cards for the public transport in Instanbul. We loaded them up with 130 Turkish Lira each, and when we got off at our stop, swiped the cards again. Their fares were distance based - it initially charged you the price for the entire journey from station A to station Z, but when you swiped your card at the exit point (example, station C), it would refund you the unused distance.
Except, it didn’t. We needed to have a personalised card, and to have one of those, we needed to be a Turkish citizen, or amend the details online.
Except, we couldn’t. None of the transport websites would load up. In fact, none of the Turkish websites would load up. So, our journey that should have cost 17.70Tł, cost us 39.61Tł, and we still had to get back!
Today’s mission was to see the Blue Mosque, so named for its interior tiles. The mosque was built between 1609 and 1617, during the rule of Sultan Ahmed I.
It was an incredibly busy place. People were not only queueing, but shoving and pressing to get in. Abi and I put on our headscarves, and we all joined the throng. We walked past a MASSIVE queue going round the side, but as there were lots of people holding flags aloft, we determined they were the tour groups.
Once inside the first set of gates that led into a prayer courtyard, we were directed to a side door for tourists - the main entry was for praying Muslims. We went through the side door, where we found the start of the previously seen massive queue.
“Don’t join this queue! This is not a queue!” two of the tour guides were saying. “Go to the back of the queue!”
We were initially rather confused, as we’d just been directed this way from inside, and we’d already joined into the line. We therefore ignored the tour guides.
“We’d never normally have done that,” Dan said to the kids when they started to question us, “but we’ve just been to Morocco and seen what queueing was like there.”
“I agree,” I answered. “All the other people being sent here from inside are joining it too. Let’s just keep our heads down.”
We slowly shuffled to the entrance, where we took our shoes off and then walked inside. It was super packed, with very little space to move around. There were a few women praying in a small area at the back, and a number of men praying in the large open area at the front.
The ceiling and dome were very pretty, with a lot of painting and stained glass windows. The blue tiles that gave the mosque its name, were also quite lovely.
We didn’t stay too long though, then pressed and pushed our way back out through the narrow doorway. We put our shoes back on, then went and sat in the old Hippodrome space.
“I’m hungry,” Abi said.
“Of course you are,” we answered.
“All I had for breakfast was a chocolate milk!”
“We all had chocolate milk, but we also had a banana. You could have had a banana as well.”
“I don’t like bananas.”
“Of course you don’t.”
I’d already looked online, and there were no gluten free bakeries in Istanbul. There were only a few restaurants that had a couple of gluten free items, and we found a close pizza and pasta place, where they could do gluten free pizza.
“I really wish you two wouldn’t just walk into a place, without checking the menu outside,” Dan said, as we gulped at the prices.
One bowl of mushroom soup, one small gluten free pizza, and two bowls of pasta, was almost 1500Tł ($78NZD).
After our eye-watering lunch, we walked to the little Hagia Sofia, another mosque. Abi and I went inside, and I think I preferred this one to the Blue Mosque, as it was simpler in its decorations.
We went to a nearby park, where Dan and I sat on a bench while the kids played.
“What’s wrong?” Dan asked me.
“I’m over it,” I replied.
“Over what?”
“Over finding food for Abi. Always looking for places. Trying to work out what she’ll eat, when she won’t try stuff. She wouldn’t try ANY of the tagines in Morocco, and given the option of something like the barbecue corn we walked past, she says she doesn’t like or want it. ‘I don’t like yoghurt, I don’t like bananas, I don’t like water, I don’t like oranges, I don’t like Moroccan tea, I don’t like olives, I don’t like hummus, I don’t like orange juice, I don’t like hard boiled eggs, I don’t like aubergines’. There is NOTHING else for her! And it seems that Istanbul, from reading all the gluten free website reviews, is a cross-contamination nightmare, or they put flour in the seasoning that goes on the chips or on the meat or on the vegetables. And the pizza today was a ridiculous price, so we can’t keep doing that. I’m not paying $35 for a small pizza!”
“She’s just a girl.”
“Yes, but she doesn’t even try!”
“Do you want to go home?”
“We can’t go home. Besides, we’ve got Tanzania still to go, and we don’t know how your tummy is going to go. I’m sure Asia will be easier. Abi just needs to eat other foods and not be so damn fussy all the time! We really need to find a bigger supermarket that hopefully has some gluten free items.”
My mood lasted another 40 minutes, as we walked to the train station, rode it for two stops, then walked to a Carrefour supermarket. They at least had a gluten free section, that consisted of four packets of pasta, five loaves of bread, some chocolate cereal, and some biscuits.
“I think we’re just going to have bite the bullet and pay these prices,” Dan said to me.
I stood in front of the shelves, motionless, looking at the cost of the food. The pasta cost $8NZD for 250g. The cereal was $12.
Abi brought over a couple of sushi triangle snacks.
“I can have these for lunch?” Abi suggested.
One triangle was $5. I could have cried.
Coldplay said it best, in The Scientist: Nobody said it was easy, no one ever said it would be so hard.
We spent a small fortune, over $100NZD, on cereal, milk, and food for dinner, which was to be nothing more elaborate than a packet of doner meat and salad in some rolls. By the time we got back to the apartment, nobody was actually hungry, so no dinner was made.
“On the positive side,” Dan said, “by not having dinner we’ve recouped some of the money from lunch!”
Maybe we’re all just still tired. Maybe we’re all a little over it.
Day 311 - 28 Apr ‘24 - Istanbul, day three. We were woken at 2am by a cracking thunderstorm! Lightning flashed nearly continuously for well over half an hour, although the thunder had moved away fairly rapidly.
The call to prayer from the nearby minaret woke us some hours later, or maybe it was the cockerel next door…
“If we lived in the this apartment,” Dan said with a grimace, “that bird would be pie.”
Our apartment had been advertised as ‘peaceful’, and it was anything but. If it wasn’t the paper thin (we can hear them sneezing), or the noisy neighbours, it was the blasted bird next door. Cockerels can crow any time of day, and this one took full advantage of that fact. When I looked out the window, I did feel sorry for him - he was all by himself with no hens to protect, in a small concrete yard. Maybe he did want put out of his misery!
It was raining a little when we got up, so decided to wait it out for a couple of hours, eventually leaving in a light drizzle around 11am.
By the time our train arrived in town, the rain had become heavier. Poor Alex didn’t have a raincoat anymore, as he’s left his winter jacket in Mallorca; fortunately, loads of other people had seemingly been caught off guard by the weather, and were wearing disposable raincoats. We quickly bought one for Alex for just $5NZD, and carried on our way.
Our first stop today was Topkapi Palace. Or at least, that was going to be our first stop.
“6000 Turkish Lira!” I said, aghast. “That’s over $300NZD! That’s more expensive than Buckingham Palace!”
“Okay, well where to next then?” Dan asked.
“Hagia Sofia, it’s right next door.”
There was a massive queue for tickets, and the rain was getting heavier, so I scanned a queue-jumping QR code…
“Good lord! These tickets are €50 each! That’s ridiculous!”
“I agree, ridiculous.”
“Well, we’re not going in there either.”
“What is it anyway?”
“THE example of Byzantine architecture. It was a church, then a mosque, then a museum, and now a mosque again.”
“Okay, so we’re not going there. It’s pretty miserable here. Where are we going?”
“Em…the Basilica Cistern was next. Look kids (showing them my phone), here’s what the Hagia Sofia looks like inside!”
We walked through some of the plaza, stopped briefly to buy Alex and Dan a cheeseburger, then sought refuge under a tree when the rain got even heavier.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a cheeseburger in the pouring rain,” laughed Dan.
The rain eventually lessened, so we walked across the road to the Basilica. The queues were long there too, despite the rain. I asked the man at the end of the queue if there were online tickets, and there were…
“€25 each!” I said to Dan, when I joined him and the kids. “But it’s only €20 if we stand in the queue for the next hour or so.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. It’s €25 to look at some columns. Let’s look at my phone again!”
So, standing at the side of the road, in the rain, we looked at pictures of the Basilica Cistern on my phone. Not quite the sightseeing day of Istanbul we had imagined, ha ha ha!
By this stage we were all cold, pretty wet, and decided to head back to the apartment. We had a few more places to visit, but would check them out tomorrow, when it was supposed to be drier.
While we sat at the train station, we talked about the rest of our planned trip around the world. We had so far been in the most expensive parts of the world, and in theory, it should all get cheaper from now. Also, we’d been constantly travelling, travelling, travelling. We hadn’t fulfilled the ‘if we like it, we’ll stay, and if we don’t like it, we’ll move’ idea we started with, because we’d had to book accommodation so far in advance to keep the prices down. Same for train tickets, and now, plane tickets.
Now that we were in Turkey, everything should slow down a bit. We didn’t have to race through the countries anymore, or plan our trip around certain dates, so hopefully we would all get a chance to recuperate.
“And taking your multivitamin might help too,” Dan pointed out.
Fair point.
And just to highlight how tired we were, at the shop we popped into on the way home, Dan bought ‘four times the normal length’ paper towels, instead of the ‘four ply’ toilet paper he thought it was.
We had our doner meat burgers for dinner, which were quite tasty, and then watched the telly until bedtime. Bring on the 5am cock crows!
Day 312 - 29 Apr ‘24 - Istanbul, day four. It wasn’t raining this morning, so that meant our sightseeing was still on! We got the train back into the centre of the old town area, then walked up and down hills until we got to the Grand Bazaar.
This place was a cigarette smoke filled, lung cancer inducing, mosh pit, cleverly disguised as one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world.
It was seriously MASSIVE! There were streets in every direction, with so many different things to buy; rugs, lamps, handbags, shoes, belts, clothes…
We could easily have become lost, wandering around for hours, but the taste of smoke was too much to bear.
“It would be alright if there was some kind of ventilation system,” Dan said when we got outside.
(It’s a pretty sad day when sitting next to people smoking a cigarette, was preferable to being inside the foggy bazaar).
We sat down on a park bench in the plaza, and Abi and I ate a barbecued corn cob. We’d had one yesterday, and they were very tasty, and cheap, too!
The next place on my list was the Spice Bazaar, and it was such a contrast to the Grand Bazaar. The colours and smell were incredible!
All the spices and teas and Turkish delights - so many pretty stalls to look at, and the owners had their patter down:
“Come inside! No need to buy! Just come and look! Cheap prices! Not expensive! Come and see! Look inside!”
We went into one of the stalls that looked particularly bright and inviting, and admired the pyramids of Turkish delight everywhere. The kids got to try the luxury variety, which were nut-filled rolls of every colour under the rainbow.
They were convinced to buy some (apparently the blackberry flavour they tried was delicious, it sure smelled it), but at $65NZD a kilo, they were only allowed a meagre 100g. We did, however, buy a little bit more of the standard rose water variety (which was very tasty, and not too strong).
We walked through more of the shopping streets, with the shops seemingly organised by content. There were underwear shops after underwear shops, then it was carpets after carpets, then children’s clothes for a while, then household items.
“It sure makes it easier to shop for things,” Dan commented.
“Yes, and the competition would make the prices excellent!” I added.
We came to another public plaza by the waterfront of the Golden Horn. This is where the Bosphorus met the Marmara Sea, and where old and new Istanbul was separated by the natural estuary.
We walked across the Galata Bridge, famous for an unknown-to-us reason, and after stopping for some lunch, waked steeply uphill until we reached Taksim Square.
This was the main public plaza of new Istanbul, and would house major public events such as New Year’s Eve celebrations. A large mosque had been cordoned off, and so had the Revolution Monument in the middle, which was a shame.
Rather than walk the 2.4km back to old Istanbul, we caught the metro, and got off at the station on the middle of a bridge - crazy! Alex, the jammy one of us, found a 200TL note, so he was naturally thrilled!
“What are you going to buy us?” we asked.
“What do you mean! This is MY money! I’m going to buy sweets for ME!”
“You know, you just read Five Children and It, and those brothers and sisters share everything,” I said.
“Yeah, well, maybe Abi can have two.”
“What about us? Why do WE have to buy YOU treats? You could buy US some! What about more Turkish delight for all of us?”
“I don’t want anymore Turkish delight.”
“Well, I think we’ve all had enough gummy bears to last us.”
(We were still eating the gummy bears Dan bought in Naples, over a month ago).
It was too early to head back to the apartment, so we went into the Yeni Cami mosque, which was by the waterfront in the old part of Istanbul.
Inside was absolutely beautiful. Actually, all four of us thought it much, much prettier than the Blue Mosque. The painting on the domes and pillars, as well as the tiles, were lovely. And it was so much quieter! Hardly anybody inside.
I did feel very sorry for the women who were praying, and not just in this mosque. The men got to pray in the grand, open area, and the women were relegated to the back of the mosque, in a fenced off area, not able to see anything. The women had to cover their hair, while the men did not. And some women out in public were in full niqab, while their husbands wore tshirts.
Never have I been more thankful for the circumstances into which I’d been born.
We decided to try the bus to get home, so quickly walked to the nearby bus stop, and waited for the bus to arrive. We joined a large group of people, half on the road and half off, rushing by onto stopped busses as soon as they arrived, while dodging the taxis pulling in and out.
We waited, and waited, but still our bus did not come round the corner. We wondered if we were even at the right place. To be fair, our bus may very well have been one of the five busses that came, that didn’t have any number on them!
We’d waited for almost 20 minutes, and were about to give up and walk to the train station, when our bus finally pulled up.
“Quick Alex, run!”
It turned out that we were at the wrong bus stop, which we found out when our bus pulled into the depot just 200m down the road. Ha ha ha!
Back at our apartment, I did a load of washing (why not, when there was a separate dryer (washer/dryers are crap)), and then we had our dinner: leftover doner meat, with a simple salad of cucumber, tomato, and grated carrot. We’ve now also had two days of taking multivitamins again, and it has definitely helped with moods and energy levels.
Dan’s stoma was not so bruised today, which he saw when he changed his bag, so that’s an improvement. Also, his pain is receding a little more every day. I found a company online that sold parastomal hernia belts, so sent them an enquiry. They also had a bunch of exercise videos to build up core strength, which Dan is going to give a try. Maybe they will help stop it getting worse for the next while.
Here’s hoping the neighbours are a bit quieter tonight. That, and the rooster dies.
Day 313 - 30 Apr ‘24 - Istanbul to Ankara. Our 13th wedding anniversary! Last night, I’d asked Alex to make me a card to give to Dan. It had a drawing of two shoes, with the laces forming a heart. Corny, I know, but 13 years is ‘lace’, and I hadn’t found any lace, or even a pair of laces for me to play on the word, so a drawing of shoelaces was the best I could come up with.
Dan was happily surprised with his card. He’d not realised what the date was! I didn’t mind - it’s the first time he’d forgotten, and we weren’t exactly paying attention to what day it was, never mind the date.
We were a little later in getting up than planned - for once we hadn’t heard the cockerel. Maybe it was pie. We still managed to get everything packed and out the door on time, for our 20 minute walk to the train station.
It had been a while since we’d done any walking with our rucksacks on, and it didn’t take long before Abigail complained about sore arms. She is insistent on not wanting her pack altered, yet complains that we haven’t altered it.
Our first train trip was a short 20 minutes, and we made it in plenty of time to catch our high-speed train to Ankara.
I love train trips. I love long train trips. I love long train trips and watching the scenery change, while sitting on a comfy seat, not having to worry about anything.
I thoroughly enjoyed the four-and-a-half hours it took to get from Istanbul to Ankara. What made it even better, was the surprise lunchbox we each got given, which contained a cheese roll, a slice of cake, a bottle of water, and a carton of juice! This was a godsend, as we hadn’t thought about lunch, and only had some bananas, a tin of teriyaki chicken, some Turkish delight, and two sushi triangles (for Abi).
Rather than walk the 35 minutes to our accommodation (we’d done it before, we could do it again), we opted for a taxi (we really didn’t feel like doing it again).
We dropped our bags off then went to a couple of different supermarkets for food dinner and breakfast supplies. It was pretty muggy outside, and the walk up the hill was less than enjoyable. Alex kindly bought Dan and I a chocolate bar each for our anniversary, and bought himself and Abi a bunch of different sweets. Good man had decided to share after all!
After they went to bed, Dan and I stayed up watching Ford V Ferrari (if you haven’t watched it, its very enjoyable, although rather long), while I wrote this blog and Dan did end of month invoices. We also listened to a terrific thunderstorm!
At least it would help clear the air. Fingers crossed it wasn’t raining tomorrow, so we could see what Ankara had to offer.
P.S. The cockerel wasn’t pie. He crowed again before we left. He would now be another guest’s problem.
Day 314 - 1 May ‘24 - Ankara. No cockerel. Not even the early morning call to prayer! Silence, beautiful silence.
After a lazy start, we looked out the window and saw rain. And it wasn’t just a drizzle, but a good, steady rain. Bugger.
At midday we put on our waterproof jackets and went to the supermarket across the road for lunch stuff, then came back to wait the weather out.
“I didn’t mind not seeing Casablanca, because I wasn’t feeling that great,” Dan said, “but I don’t want to miss out on Ankara as well. We’re only here one day.”
So, we put on our waterproof jackets AND pants (except Alex, who was having a tantrum at having to stop playing on his Nintendo), and made our way to the metro station. Serves him right when we get soaked.
We had a bit of fun at the station, when only one of the seven ticket machines was working, but it wasn’t in English, and wasn’t printing tickets anyway, only updating travel cards. Fortunately, when we asked an under-enthused man behind a window for help, he said the whole ticket system wasn’t working, and it was therefore free to go through the gate.
We had another bit of fun when the train arrived at the station we wanted, slowed down, but kept going and didn’t stop!
“Were we meant to push the button on the door?” Dan asked me.
“I’ve got no idea!” I replied. “I’ve never known any subway to not stop at a station, or need you to push buttons.”
A couple of women approached us and said sometimes it doesn’t stop, so to get off at the next station and go back in the opposite direction.
So that’s what we did. This time, as we got to the station, we pushed the button on the door. And the train kept going!
“Ha ha ha ha,” Dan and I laughed.
“What do we do now?” the kids both asked.
“We get off at the next one and walk back!”
By the time we got off the train, the rain had stopped and the sun had come out. Alex had the last laugh after all, as the rest of us were soon sweltering in our waterproofs. We were also blinded by the light, as none of us had our sunnies.
Our sightseeing trip today was to the Anitkabir Monument. This was built to honour Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first president of the republic of Turkey.
It was an immense plaza, with a massive Parthenon-like room just for his sarcophagus, and rooms off the side of the plaza for his cars. Further down a long lion-statue lined walkway, there was even a room with his boat on display. There were armed guards everywhere, standing on plinths, and we got to watch them changing station.
Personally, I thought the whole thing a little ostentatious. Even the inscribed eulogy was rather sycophantic, especially given his controversial history regarding the genocide of Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian peoples.
Rather than take the metro back to the apartment, we walked the 2.5km, and stopped at a barber for Dan and Alex to get their hair cut. The barbers may not have given them the best hair cut ever, but at just $15NZD for two haircuts and a beard trim, we couldn’t complain!
We came across a public plaza near our apartment, that had an incredible statue, as well as hundreds of pigeons! This was also an excellent place for the kids to do a Pokémon Go battle, and get another legendary Pokémon.
The skies started clouding over, and it wasn’t long after making it indoors that we could hear the pouring rain and rolling thunder.
We had homemade doner kebabs for dinner, which were yummy, and more multivitamins. They were definitely helping, as everyone’s energy levels were slowly increasing. Dan’s pain also continued to improve slightly; no reply from the parastomal hernia support belt company, though.
Day 315 - 2 May ‘24 - Ankara to Göreme. Neither Dan nor I got to sleep until 1am, with too many things on our mind. Also, the duvet was a strange thickness and density, and too small for anybody to sleep under, unless they were as thick as Flat Stanley.
“It’s like your Scottish potato scones!” he said with a smile, shortly before falling asleep. “That’s what it reminds me of. A human-sized potato scone!”
“I like potato scones,” I replied, “but I get what you mean about the duvet.”
We woke up a few minutes before 9am, which was perfect, as that’s when the alarm was set. We didn’t want to get up, but it was moving day, so we had to pack all our stuff up again.
The rain had fully cleared overnight, so our walk to the metro was nice and dry. Sadly, there were mechanics fixing the turnstiles at the station, so access to the trains were no longer free, but the lady behind the ticket desk this time was much friendlier than the guy we dealt with yesterday.
Our train went directly to the main bus station of Ankara (miraculously stopping at the station it didn’t stop at yesterday, go figure). It was a HUGE bus station, on two levels! We could see 138 platforms before the numbers further on got blocked by poles - who knows how big it actually was!
There was a bit of confusion as to which bus was ours. We’d been told it was platform six, but that bus didn’t have Göreme listed as a destination on its piece of paper in the window. The driver in platform five passed us over to a third bus in platform four, which didn’t have any destinations in its window, but the ‘host’ loading the bags said it was the correct one.
With just a little bit of faith, we sat down in our surprisingly comfortable seats (which had a fantastic recline on them). We didn’t even make it out the depot before we had to stop for almost 15 minutes, when the bus in front of us hit the bus in front of them!
Alex kept us informed on the argument that was happening outside (“they’re grabbing each other, mummy, and there’s a lady crying!). There was a huge queue building up behind us, but fortunately someone had a brainwave, and a forklift soon arrived to move the concrete lane barriers out the way we could all drive past the blockage.
Once we were back underway, we were pleasantly surprised by the host offering a free drink and snack! This wasn’t mentioned anywhere on the ticket, nor was the 10 minute stop halfway for the driver to go to the toilet and grab a coffee.
“I’m quite pleased with the seats and the bus,” Dan said, when he returned from his own toilet break. “It makes me feel a lot happier about our upcoming 10-hour bus trip to Antalya!”
(Yes, you read that right - 10 unavoidable hours on a bus in a few days’ time).
When we arrived in Göreme, our elderly host was kindly waiting for us with his car, ready to take us to our accommodation. We loaded the kids and small bags in the car, while Dan and I walked with our rucksacks.
“You do realise we’ve just put our passports AND children in a car, without us?” I cynically said to him as we crossed the road.
“I’m not concerned,” he replied. “The guy had come to meet us, and offered to take all our bags. We know where he lives, as that’s where we’re staying!”
The man told us which direction to walk, and even waited in his car to make sure we were following, then stopped at the house about 100m further down the road. I wasn’t actually worried either, but it’s not necessarily something I’d do again.
The host lived in the building above us, which also housed his nephew’s travel agency. Naturally, we were encouraged to go there instead of any of the numerous other travel agencies in Göreme!
We walked around the highly-touristic and commercialised town of Göreme, to find a supermarket for food for dinner and breakfast. Our fourth shop was successful, in that we bought frozen mixed vegetables and eggs, for stirfried rice, and cornflakes for breakfast.
Dinner, however, was not what I would call successful.
“It’s MasterChef quality for sure!” I said with a grin.
The rice was stodgy, the peas dry, and the carrots hard.
“The only nice thing about this dinner is the eggs!”
“I thought you said it was MasterChef quality?” Dan asked.
“Oh yes, it is! Absolutely!”
The main thing was, nobody was going to bed hungry.
Day 316 - 3 May ‘24 - Göreme. Our kids are naughty little shits, and that’s putting it nicely.
At 5:20am, I felt Dan get out of bed and then heard him telling off both Alex and Abi for playing on their Nintendos. They had woken up for whatever reason, and decided that playing on their Nintendos was a wonderful idea.
“YOU ARE SOOO NAUGHTY!” Dan said to them. “I HAVE NO IDEA WHEN YOU’LL BE GETTING THESE BACK! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DID THIS!”
When he got back to bed, he told me he’d heard them making noise, and reckoned they’d been sneaking their Nintendos or kindles at night for a while now, as they had both been very tired recently.
Unfortunately, that time of morning was sunrise.
“Well, this sucks,” I grumbled, as we both lay there awake in the daylight. “Who in their right mind has WHITE blinds over their windows?! And the bloody sparrows have started now!”
At 6:30am we were both still awake, so checked up on some emails, and admired the colours on the carpet.
I’m not sure what time we fell asleep from exhaustion, but when the alarm went off at 8:30am, neither of us were happy about it. Of course, the two little shits were fast asleep.
“GET UP!”
“We’re tired.”
“Don’t care.”
Today we were off on a tour of the Cappadocia region. We were part of a small tour group of just 10 people, and our first stop was a viewpoint over Göreme.
The fairy chimneys were quite incredible to see; they were formed through volcanic activity, and hundreds of years ago, were carved out and turned into various accommodations and storage buildings.
Further up the road we were taken to see the pigeon houses. Years ago, the local people housed pigeons for their excrement, which was used as fertiliser. When modern chemical fertilisers became more easily available, the pigeon houses were no longer needed, and were closed.
Our next stop was the Selime Rock Monastery. This was a fascinating collection of carved chimneys that had a massive 8m2 kitchen, chapel, cathedral, and various other rooms. Everywhere was connected by tunnels, some longer than others.
The inside of the cathedral was pretty awesome, with niches cut out for reliquaries, and some paintings still visible on the walls.
The chapel was a large two-level room, and Alex and Abi had lots of fun trying all the different ways to get up and down.
It was then time for lunch, which we had at Belisirma. It was a simple meal of soup, salad, and then a main with a rice/bulgur/noodle combo; I had chicken, Alex had koftas, Abi had vegetarian (without the rice), and Dan had a whole baked trout!
We then went for a walk through the Ihlara Valley, which is the second longest canyon in the world behind the Grand Canyon. It was a lovely, peaceful valley, and the stream running through it was flowing super fast due to the recent storms.
Up in the hillside were more of the carved out rooms. Some of them had multiple small niches, which we learned were for crematory urns. The sides of the hillside had collapsed at some point, so all the walkways to the rooms had disappeared.
Further along the walk we came to a series of tea houses situated at the river’s edge, where we stopped for a brief break. It would have been a wonderfully cool place to have tea in the middle of summer.
The total walk was only around 3km, and it didn’t take us long to finish. Our next stopping point was the main one of the trip, the Kaymakli underground city.
The first layer of the city was carved by Phrygians in 8-7BC, then Christians built the church, and even later, Byzantines extended and deepened it between 780-1180.
It was connected to another underground city called Derinkuyu by an 8km long tunnel, which was unfortunately blocked by a partial collapse. We were only allowed down to the fourth level, but that was deep enough.
A few of our group gave up at the first level, and returned to the surface, but we carried on down the very narrow and rather steep tunnels to each level. I’m not at all claustrophobic, but the knowledge of how deep we were underground, with no quick way out, was rather disconcerting.
One of the really awesome features were the rolling stone doors. They were huge! Well over one metre high and almost 30cm wide, they were used as emergency doors to escape invaders.
The doors would be jammed open with a simple wedge, which, when removed, would allow the door to roll on its curved path, and secure the hallway. (The one in the above photo had been cemented in place, and you can see the size of it when you compare it to the man standing in the room underneath). The hole in the middle of the door allowed the residents to see if the coast was clear, or attack the invaders with spears or arrows. Very Indiana Jones!
We didn’t spend very long on the city, only half an hour or so, and Dan and I felt like we were rushed through it quite quickly. Once we were back topside, we initially thought we would have liked to spend longer there, but decided it probably would have been a bit repetitive after a while.
We had one stop left on our tour, a visit to a leather fashion show! There was a proper catwalk, which the models strutted up and down on, and then invited Alex and Abi to join them!
They were whisked off to the back and given a leather jacket to wear, and then they got to parade up and down the catwalk a couple of times!
After the show, we were invited to look around the shop. There were some seriously luxurious leather jackets, almost all of which were reversible. They were made from a leather they called ‘silk leather’, which was incredibly soft and only 0.3mm thick!
We were offered a 50% discount, but the prices were extortionate. The cheapest I could find was $600USD, with one coat being $1050USD.
They really were gorgeous though…
The trip back to Göreme didn’t take too long, and we arrived at our apartment shortly before 7pm. We headed back out with the intention of going to a restaurant for dinner, but happened to walk past a supermarket we’d missed before.
“How does hot chips and fried eggs sound?” I said, as I spied some chips in the freezer.
“Great,” answered Dan, “and we can have these too,” as he picked up some chicken nuggets.
“I don’t want chips,” said Abi. “I’ll just have spaghetti.”
And so that’s what we did. Spaghetti and chips for Abi, and chips and nuggets for the rest of us. A nice, healthy meal. Yummy!
The kids both fell asleep rather quickly, which was unsurprising since it was almost 9pm. Hopefully they stay asleep the whole night, and hopefully we don’t get woken up again.
Although we’re not holding our breath…
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