Chimney Tops Everywhere

Our trek to Cappadocia, Turkey began with a lovely 10 hour night bus ride. As usual I slept the whole ride whıle Mary drifted in and out of sleep. We were greeted wıth views of amazing chimney style houses, rock formations, and incredible caves. There is not place like Cappadocia, that is for sure. The city looks like somethıng taken out of The Flintstones or Star Wars (part of the movie was actually filmed there). We jumped on a tour bus and were on our way to Göreme.

Cappadocia is made up of lots of little towns, the most popular beıng Goreme, Ürgüp, and Avanos. All the roads in the towns were quıte windy and surrounded by little gnome-like houses carved into the rocks. We stopped by The Göreme Museum which was a group of houses and churches carved into the mountain side. The Museum is known for its four churches containing impressive fresco's on the walls depicting Biblical scenes, like The Last Supper. Throughout the town you could see small holes carved into the mountiın side. These were created for pigeons as a home to fly into because they were an important bırd for the people in Cappadocia (yeah I don't understand it either). We visıted one area called Pigeon Valley, go figure.



On the tour we stopped to see varıous rock formations - the mushroom tops, chimney tops, churches, the castle, and little cave homes all the while taking in incredible views of the valley. After a quıck lunch (stuffed green peppers was our favorıte food in Turkey) we were off to Ürgüp. There we went to an Onyx makers shop where they showed us how to carve and polish onyx to be sold. We also learned about turquoise, whıch means Turkish stone. Mary and I cannot get enough of that turquoise jewelry. The lightest blue stone is from China, the darker stone-shaped rocks are from Arizona, the next darkest stone is from Iran and the Mıddle East, while the darkest of all the turquoise stones are from Turkey and often contaın small gold flecks. We both picked up a little something to add to our jewelry collection. Precious!

Back on the tour we saw the much anticipated Camel rock (Mary and I are both obsessed wıth camels). In addıtıon to the camels there were 'apparently' rock formations that looked like Napoleon's hat, two lovers embarrassing, a penguin, and two hands praying (I have no ıdea who thought that rock looked like hands). Anyway, we saw more awesome vıews, took a 20 iın hike up to the top of one cliff that looked out ınto the valley wıth a vıew that you could never get tired of looking at. Ürgüp has the most well known landmark in Cappadocia. It is a set of three mushroom tops known as the dad, mom, and son with the grandparent mushrooms in the background. This site is so well known that it is actually on the back of the Turkish Lıra 50 bill. Sweet!

We were then back on the road heading for Avanos, whıch is known for their pottery making. We stopped by a pottery shop where we watched the master potter create a sugar bowl (a test all master potters must go through). I got to try my hand at throwıng a pot, ehhh vase, eh umm a bowl is what it looked like in the end. Theır work was so beautiful and the detail of the designs on the pieces were so precise. The clay they work wıth is red clay that is taken from the Red River running through the town. We decided to make it just a day trip in Cappadocia and get back to Istanbul in order to finish updating this blog, label our pictures (see how much we love you) and wrap up other odds and ends housekeepıng wise. We had to finish getting ready because our next stop is EGYPT!!!!