No balloons this morning and a little bit of rain kept us indoors after breakfast. At breakfast we had a great conversation with our host whose family moved to Goreme about 25 years ago. At that time their stone House was the only one in the area! It has built up considerably since then!

A detail in the garden, a grapevine growing out of the wall!

Eventually we headed out for an early dinner and chose the Testi Kebab, a traditional dish of a stew cooked in a clay jug that is capped with dough that creates a pressure cooker effect. It comes out of the oven on a tray of burning coals!

The jug is cracked at the neck with a hammer and the hard burnt dough lid is removed. The cooked stew is then poured out into a hot clay dish!

It was delicious, unfortunately it wasn’t lamb!

We had to head back to pack for a long travel day tomorrow.

Rain, dark clouds and wind this morning means no balloons today! We took it easy in the morning, spending several hours before breakfast securing ferry tickets and accommodations for a short island hop through Greece in the near future. After a leisurely breakfast sampling all the Turkish salads and breads made by ‘Mum’, and nap time, we headed out to walk around the town of Goreme.

Not all is old here in Goreme. There is lots of construction, but our host said there are rules about the type of construction allowed, to ‘fit in’ with the existing. This modern hotel is built into the existing partially restored stone cave house.

There is a ridge above this little neighborhood that we have seen people gather on to watch the balloons, so we wove our way through the narrow cobblestone streets, up, up and further up until we came to the ticket booth where you have to pay 20 turkish lira(.62 cents US) per person for the privilege of walking even further uphill to the summit! But it’s worth it!

From the ridge we looked southeast over the Zemi Valley below and to the right, and northeast to the Rose Valley at the base of the plateau in the distance.

Looking directly down on the west side of the ridge we spotted our Airbnb rooftop terrace and breakfast room (the purple arrow) and our rental car (the green arrow)!

All around town there are stray cats and dogs that are communally fed. The dogs have tags pierced into their ears I imagine to indicate they have been vaccinated against rabies! Some dogs have collars and I imagine they are pets that have free reign of town.

This handsome aloof fella looked at home on the peak of the ridge like he’s king of the hill!

This morning was overcast and the balloons did not fly. At breakfast we found out that there is a service that gives a report daily with a fly or no-fly order that all balloon operators must adhere to for safety standards. It is through Kapadokya Universitesi! We had a leisurely morning and let the sun burn off the majority of the clouds before we headed out around 10am to visit one of the famous valleys of Cappadocia, Love Valley. Named so because of the phallic looking rock formations known as fairy chimneys in Turkiye, or hoodoos as they are called in the US and seen in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. We are now both recovering from a cold so we opted to drive along the rim of the valley, looking down on the rock formations rather than hike into the valley,

We also chose not to ride a camel down into the valley, or have our pictures taken just sitting on one by the heart shaped overlook!

It was getting pretty hot already and we didn’t want to over-exert ourselves!

For more pictures of the fairy chimneys and information check out this blog; The Turkey Traveler.

We moved on to another valley, Rose Valley, not too far away. It takes its name from the rose hued rock that rises up to a plateau, with less frequent stand alone fairy chimneys, and it is known for several churches carved into the rock. The rose color is especially pronounced at sunset, however we were there in early afternoon and the rock was bright white in the sunshine!

The entrance to Rose Valley, you can see some caves carved into the rock on the left.

Robert set up his drone to do some overhead shots and I wandered to the caves.

There is a church carved into the rock! A detail shows remnants of the colorful frescoes that decorated the interior.

I wandered further up a path into a box canyon and looked back at the walls lined with caves, tunnels, archways and high seemingly unreachable sealed doorways.

I came back out of the box canyon and followed another path around a corner and along a rock wall and looking up saw another cave carved into the wall.

I could see carvings on the roof of the cave, but there were no stairs, no ladders, no footholds to climb up the gritty rock face.

Finally I just trusted the grip of my hiking shoes and crab-walked up a narrow crevice and made it up to the cave!

I entered a large room, missing the front wall (erosion maybe) with ornate carvings in the rock roof and once brightly colored frescoes adorning the arches and domes!

There were several rooms I wandered through, some with soot covering the walls and ceilings, some with cubbyholes everywhere. This must have been a church with adjacent dining and cooking rooms. And I had it all to myself!

Then I noticed a few drops of rain on the rock outside and decided I should get back to Robert! I backwards crawled down the gritty rock face, thankful I have newer vibram soled hiking shoes and hoofed it back to the valley entrance. The rain was just a passing cloud and dissipated quickly and we had one more valley we wanted to explore before going back to Goreme and finding dinner.

The next valley is further south near the neighboring town of Uchisar, about a 15 minute drive away. Pigeon Valley is named for the many pigeon houses that were carved into the rock in order to encourage pigeons to congregate and nest so that the pigeon poop could more easily be collected to use as fertilizer!

The overlook above Pigeon Valley with a thick forest on the valley floor.

We hiked down the wide cobbled road into the valley where it turned to a sandy trail in the shade of the pines and the scent of jasmine flowers. The large rock on the right is the highest point in the region of Cappadocia, known as Uchisar Castle, although it is a natural rock formation.

The many varied cave houses in the valley, some look like apartment buildings! The lower left picture is of the pigeon houses, the pigeons fly into the little holes at the top into a large room carved into the rock where there are nesting niches. There is a hatch somewhere, a doorway or a hole blocked by a removable rock for access to clean out the pigeon poop several times a year!

As we drove back to Goreme to find some dinner we passed by the back of Uchisar Castle and saw the many caves carved into the rock!

It looks like swiss cheese! It is believed that up to 1,000 people lived in the rock at some point!

We woke at dawn and climbed the stairs to the rooftop terrace to see the hot air balloons rising over the village in the morning light!

Breakfast isn’t served until 8:30am to accommodate those guests who rose before dawn to take a balloon ride. It is worth the wait!

The many salads and sweet and savory pastries (made by the matriarch of the family) the olives and cheeses, are complimented with a small omelet, juices and coffee or tea, and fruits! Enough to last until dinner time!

We finished breakfast and prepared for our first outing. Our host suggested we attempt the closest hike, Zemi Valley, a short walk around the ridge behind the hotel.

Once on the trail we diverted on a short hike to a church carved into a rock ‘fairy chimney’.

Inside, the tiny church was decorated with frescoes that the attendant guide claimed we’re 1300 years old, which would put the date of this church’s construction at about 725 AD which is very plausible.

Continuing up the valley we discovered this rock house with a ladder to the entrance attesting to the theory that many of the houses carved into the rock were shelters from marauding invaders.

We enjoyed our walk in the Zemi Valley which was shaded by large trees and still used by locals for small scale orchards and gardens. We retraced our steps to the valley entrance then continued up the road to the Open Air Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is known for the many churches carved into the rocks and decorated with biblical frescoes dating to the 10th to 12th centuries. No photography is allowed inside the churches tho.

One of the smaller churches entrance.

A panel showing the many frescoes you can’t take pictures of!

The largest and most elaborate of the churches.

Photos are allowed in the ‘dining halls’ and adjacent kitchens that are associated with the churches. This dining room with low table surrounded by benches at the same level, carved from the rock, is lit up with electric lights. Back in the day candles must have been used for light and the kitchens are sooty from the wood or coal fuel used to cook meals for the monks, priests and parishioners.

It seemed like a long walk back to our Airbnb, we were bushed from the walking, the heat and our symptoms of the cold virus we picked up in Thailand! We had an easy evening, dinner at a local restaurant, and an early bedtime!

As we slept overnight the flight path diverted slightly to avoid the conflict in the Middle east, jogging north then west to avoid Iranian airspace.

As the sun rose we descended into Istabul!

After a short layover we caught our next flight to Kayseri, about in the middle of Türkiye, and the airport servicing the Cappadocia region. We picked up a rental car and Robert adjusted his brain to driving on the right side of the road!

Through the car window we caught sight of a huge snow capped mountain! Mount Erciyes.

Our destination is Göreme, pronounced “gore-eh-May’, the epicentre of Cappadocia, known for it’s eroded rock formations, fairy chimneys, and cave houses carved into the stone!

Our Airbnb, Luwian Stone House.

The view from the rooftop terrace!