Cappadocia - A Second Day of Tours

Kati and Me with Some Fairy Chimneys

September 12 -- Today was our second day in Cappadocia, but before getting on to our tours for the day, I have a quick addendum to the post about yesterday regarding last night.  We had dinner at a fantastic second-floor chic restaurant in Urgup.  As soon as we walked in the waiter latched onto me, both because we were American and because I was wearing a Fenerbache jersey (His favorite team).  We started with this great little pastry appetizer filled with meat, cheese and vegetables, almost like the Turkish equivalent to a spring roll.  Then we had the kebap house specialty, which was good but a little heavy on the yogurt and a little light on the meat.  Our meal ended with a surprising dessert on the house, semolina pudding with ice cream, which was very tasty.  The waiter then proceeded to have about a five minute conversation with us about our favorite American TV shows.  He asked what my favorite show was and when I told him that it was How I Met Your Mother, he lit up.  Apparently he watches it every night, along with a laundry list of other American shows...and the Turkish version of Desperate Housewives that just started.

Now, onto today.  Sadly, Gorkhan wasn't our tour guide again.  Instead we had some young girl who was not nearly as good of a guide.  She was adequate, but nothing more than par for the course.  We were definitely spoiled with Gorkhan.  Our first stop for the day was at Monk Valley, better known for its "Fairy Chimneys."  These fairy chimneys are some of the iconic rock formations in the area, and they were absolutely amazing!  Again, you really just have to look through the pictures to appreciate how unbelievable these valleys were.  The rock formations are the result of three volcanoes in the area erupting constantly over millions of layers and forming different layers of ash/dust along with layers of hardened lava.  Through both wind and water erosion the layers were mostly eaten away, leaving these crazy formations standing in their various valleys.  What's really cool is that you can tell the prominent chemical in each eruption.  For example, in Imagination Valley, our second stop for the day, there are distinct reds (Iron) and greens (Copper), and even yellow (??).  I had never seen rock formations that had such a green hue to them before.  Imagination Valley was pretty neat, but not nearly as impressive as Monk Valley.

Our next stop of the day was at a pottery workshop where we got to see the masters working on an ancient Hittite pottery wheel, that is spun with your feet, and painting designs on the finished pottery.  Pottery is a huge deal in Cappadocia.  In fact, until not very long ago if a man couldn't make a pot, he wasn't allowed to get married because he wouldn't be able to support his wife.  This was one of the coolest workshops we saw on our trip but the prices were a little outrageous.  I've been looking for a Cappadocian-style wine jug for about a week now and these are the most expensive, but also the nicest, I've found.  Unfortunately, I couldn't justify spending $600 on a ceramic wine jug.

Lunch followed our visit to the pottery workshop.  We had the traditional Cappadocian kebap, a pottery kebap.  These are really cool...they cook the kebap in a small ceramic pot for 13 hours, sealing the lid to the pot with bread, and then bring it out to your table and, with much showmanship, use a big knife to sever the lid from the rest of the pot.  Sadly, the pot for our group was too big to do this with, so we didn't get the show.  However, over lunch Kati and I befriended an American couple from Arizona that was on our tour.  It was a nice change to find some Americans in a sea of Australian tourists and foreigners.

Picture of Constantine and Helena
in the Snake Church

After lunch we stopped by the Goreme Open Air Museum.  This museum, in the middle of Goreme, has the best examples of cave churches in the area.  It's really neat to see the churches both from the iconoclastic period, when images and pictures weren't permitted, and from after the iconoclastic period.  Some of the churches had fantastic murals painted on their walls.  It was very frustrating because we weren't allowed to take pictures of any of the artwork in the churches.  Yet, when we got to the Snake Church and I found a painting of Constantine and his mother Helena I knew that I had to find some way to get a picture (For the sake of Sigma Chi), so I snuck back into the church between tour groups and snapped a candid shot, without a flash of course.

From the open air museum we went to a carpet workshop.  The Cappadocian region is very impoverished and it doesn't lend itself well to agriculture.  To help the residents of the area, the government encourages the continuation of traditional crafts, like pottery and carpet weaving.  The shop we visited doubles as an academy.  The shop provides women in the surrounding rural areas with looms, materials, and instruction, and then the women return to their hometowns where they weave rugs and give them to the shop, receiving payment when the rugs are actually sold.  Like with men and pottery, a woman wasn't permitted to get married if she couldn't weave a rug because she was seen as worthless within the community and incapable of taking care of a household.  The particular shop we visited is very respected, having won the International Rug Competition in Atlanta, GA in 2007-2010.  The carpets were beautiful.  If I had several thousand dollars and a hardwood floor in our apartment, I would have bought one!

Our final stop for the day was at Uchisar Castle, the highest point in Cappadocia.  The mountainside in which the castle is built is entirely natural, but it was carved out by men and used to defend the area from pillagers and Muslims.  After the tour we stopped by a small restaurant by the bus station and got some pretty good kebaps before catching the night bus to Antalya.  Our trip to Cappadocia has been incredible, I'm so glad we let the travel agency take care of everything.  While we could have done it ourselves, the valleys and other sights are so spread out that having it all organized and having transportation provided was a huge help and relieved a lot of unnecessary stress.

SIDE NOTE - I apologize for being back-logged with uploading pictures.  Our internet connection is pretty slow.  Additionally, I have very limited (and dwindling) space on my server for pictures.  I'll try to get them up as soon as I can.  However, let me know if you're interested and I'll make sure all of them are posted in a much more compact format once we return to the states and I'll let you know where to find everything.