Turkey – Cappadocia Day 1

When we left Jeddah in July we planned that our return trip would include a stopover in Europe. Then Dano learned he had meetings in Turkey. We thought we would accompany him and during the couple of days of meetings the kids and I could explore Istanbul. Then a week before we left Ohio my wonderful brother came to visit and we spent an evening talking about his two-week Turkey trip a few years ago. He convinced us of the spectacularity of this country. We quickly scrapped the Europe portion in order to devote our entire time to Turkey. Let it be said from the beginning, one week was not enough!

We had great flights from DC to Frankfurt and then to Istanbul. We spent a very quick night there and early the next morning caught a plane to Cappadocia. This is the same Cappadocia area referred to in the New Testament where Christ's apostles taught. Geographically speaking, Turkey spans a wide area (larger than I had previously realized), approximately the size of the southeastern United States. From Istanbul, we flew for about an hour to reach Kayseri, located in central Turkey. The airport was small and quick to navigate. From Kayseri a driver drove us an hour west to the city of Urgup in the Cappadocia region. We traveled like a true Middle Eastern family, six people plus a driver in a very small taxi.

We had arranged to stay at a cave house in Urgup. They are quite popular there. Most cave house hotels are owned by local people and offer five to ten rooms. Our hostess was a Turkish woman who spent her high school years in California so, needless to say, she spoke English fluently, very helpful to a unilingual American family. It was beautiful and the most unique hotel we have ever stayed in. The hostess and her familial staff treated us like family. We interacted with the other guests intimately on the hotel property, meeting some from Australia, some from the states. The caves are manmade dating back to the Hittites who settled the area between 1800 BC and 1200 BC. Prehistorically there were three large volcanoes and multiple volcano craters. The stone caves are comprised of soft stone formed from compressed ash from the volcanic eruptions.

Our room was under the arched doorway.

Our first day we took a tour to several sites. The first was Nicholas’ church in the city of Mustafapasa, an area that contains several Greek stone churches dating from the eighth to tenth centuries. The frescos were beautiful and quite well preserved depicting the Godhead, the twelve apostles, and Mary and the baby Jesus.

Who would guess this was once a church?

The kids stand in one of the front rooms of the church.

After climbing around the church grounds we left for the Keslik monastery. This was a Byzantine monastery with multiple churches built into the rock. This is where I took a nap and rested my feet (in the van, not in the monastery). There was a large refectory that served a couple hundred monks indicating this was a large monastery.

The kids attempt to push the stone that at one time covered the entrance.The monastery's refectory
Abby with one of her many friends. We happened to follow this couple from site to site. She really liked Abby and gave her a pin with the Turkish eye. It is a tradition to give someone an eye. It is believed to protect them from evil.

Erin and Abby sit atop the hill of the monastery.

From there we travelled to Sobesos where there are ruins of a Roman city built in the fourth century AD containing Roman baths and an incredibly large mosaic which has been partially excavated and preserved.
Our next stop was to one of the three major underground cities. These cities were also constructed by the Hittites, the very short Hittites. This venture was not for the claustrophobic. They were built as far back as 4000 years BC as a way to hide from their enemies, perhaps the Persians. We hiked and crawled through only a tenth of the city and that took us nearly an hour. The cities' passages are quite intricate. We would, no doubt, have been lost without our guide. We saw how these people survived underground in hiding. We hiked down about forty meters although the cities are built as deep as one hundred meters below ground. There were some places where Dano was crawling through the passages on his hands and knees.

This was one of the meeting rooms in the underground city.

We saw how they stored water, cooked, and even resolved their toileting issues. (You can ask us how if you’re really interested. We think this was our guide’s favorite part as he repeated it to us three or four times!)

Our final stop was Avanos where we toured a ceramics workshop. This was beautiful! We were toured around by a gentleman whose family has been in the business for several generations. The three older children were each given the opportunity to throw a pot on a foot-operated potter’s wheel, meaning you kick it repeatedly to keep the wheel turning. What a great leg workout! The patterns of the ceramics are so detailed and precise; some projects take months to complete and cost quite a pretty Lira.

We spent the remainder of the early evening hanging out and playing cards at the villa. We watched a beautiful sun set over the Cappadocian region of Turkey. It was just so serene. We needed to get a good night’s sleep, as our next day would begin quite early.