When we woke up this morning we got our washing organised while chatting with an American girl in our room. She had done her washing the day earlier, and was saying how annoyed she was that her favourite jacket was really smoky after a night out, so I offered to put it in with ours, then took it all down to the other hotel. They weighed it, which was almost 9kg, but they gave it to me for 8kg, which was nice, but still cost 40 lira!! (~$20!) The most expensive wash yet! After I dropped it off I met Darren in the tourism office connected to our hostel where we were looking at prices for tours to Cappadocia. They gave us a deal including an overnight bus each way, hostel accommodation, two different tours of the area and a hot air balloon ride for €250 each, which was a pretty good deal, seeing as balloon rides are normally at least €120, and the bus was about €30 each way! It's still a fair bit out of budget, but from everyone I've spoken to that's been there, it will be well worth it! When that was all booked and sorted we went for a walk and wandered through some residential streets near our area and came out by the sea. We walked along the waterfront for a while, by the rocks, past the guy in his tightie whities washing his clothes in the ocean, and past the cute cats and kittens feasting on a pile of raw meats someone had given them and kept walking until we came to Park Gulhane. We started walking through the park back towards the center of town when the midday call to prayer started. It was a pretty amazing experience, because as we were walking the call to prayer followed us, as each mosque started their songs, one after the other, in the direction we were walking, and kept following us until we had almost reached the other end of the park! That was pretty special! When we got out the other end of the park we followed the tram tracks back to our side of town and went back to the restaurant we'd gone to with the boys the other day, Defne, to get some lunch. We got a couple of massive meals, a steak and a veggie kebab, accompanied with massive amounts of salads and rice and that, as well as the free mezes (dips and breads) they bring out at the start, and finished with a couple of free apple teas! Amazing service again, although our friend Aziz wasn't there! When we were done we headed back towards the hostel as Darren had a bit of a headache, but then decided we'd go try to find somewhere for him to get a massage, as even painkillers hadn't helped him. So we walked up to the main street, and walked along for a while trying to find somewhere, but even after walking quite a while we didn't find even a little Thai massage place! I thought it was quite strange as almost every other place we've been seemed to have an abundance of them! Darren was getting quite annoyed though, because his head was hurting and he was sick of walking, so we turned back. Where we turned we had also found the Grand Bazaar, so we walked through one corridor of that on our way back. It was quite a long corridor, and it was almost all jewellery, so I can only imagine how big the rest of it is if this is just the jewellery section! When we came out we just headed back to the hostel to use the wifi to look up if there were any massage places. After looking it up, and asking the guy at the tourist office, we discovered that there apparently weren't any that weren't part of a hammam. So we went up the street on the off chance that our laundry was finished early, which it was, then took it back to the hostel and chilled out at the tables on the top floor. (After putting on some warmer clothes!) We had some time to kill, so while Darren rested and tried to snooze on the chair, I did a complete rejig and sort through of our bags and laundry. We got a cup of tea from the lady in the restaurant who spoke no English, but eventually understood and put the kettle on for us, and I ended up with a much larger pile of rubbish than I'd anticipated! We'd been lugging around a whole lot of useless stuff! It's crazy how you can still have so much clutter when you only have such a tiny bag! In the end, Jack and Jill were both looking a lot neater, and maybe very slightly lighter! When we were done there, I dropped the American girls jacket on her bed, as she wasn't there, then we went downstairs and went across the road to a little kiosk to get some snacks for the bus. We waited in the tourist office for about an hour after that, using the wifi, then our transfer came to pick us up. We followed the guy to this crazy old run down bus, and set off. That was an interesting drive! The roads were crazy, and the drive was bumpy, and the driver was weaving in and out of traffic and roads that looked too small for him, dodging cars, people and trams, and to top it off, the back door didn't even close properly, and we had to keep pulling it shut! As we drove around we picked up more and more people until the bus was jam packed with people and luggage, then continued our crazy drive (shutting the door again every few minutes!) for half an hour or so to the main bus station. We shared our chocolate with a Canadian girl and a Chilean girl who were sitting with us, and they shared their corn-yummy-dont-know-what-it-was stuff with us. When we arrived at the bus terminal we had a confusing time trying to work out which was the next bus, as our transfer guy didn't really explain. After a while we were told, and given our tickets, then we put our bags under before going up to the waiting room for a while to watch the Turkish Voice on TV, and chat with the girls, a couple from Syria/Macedonia, and a group of Japanese girls and guys. At 8:30 (our departure time) we got everyone downstairs, and after double checking with the driver that we left at 8:30 (which he said yes to), we found out we left at 9. Everything runs in 'Turkish time' here it seems! So we went back to the waiting room for a bit, then got called down just before 9 and got on our 12-hour overnight bus, destination: Göreme! It was a terrible journey. We were already really tired, but they didn't turn the lights off until about 1:30!! The guy on the bus looking after the passengers was rude and angry and kept everyone awake. We think at times he was trying to be funny, but you don't want someone being 'funny' and poking people (especially Darren for some reason) so they don't sleep at 3am on a 12-hour bus! So annoying! Our Chilean friend was sleeping on the floor under the seat but even she didn't escape his pokes! Eventually Darren went to go sleep on the back seat (even though the guy said he couldn't) and I got a few broken hours lying down on our seat too. The bus ride was really bumpy too, and kept stopping and starting suddenly, and Darren was a little travel sick. (Not me for once!) So yeah. That was fun. Not.