Sights of Cappadocia
Early start today to get to Goreme open air museum. Goreme is 10km from our hotel at Nevsehir and is in an area surrounded by valleys. Goreme was referred to as Korama in the early writings in the 6th century.
The area of Cappadocia has very unusual land and rock formations which is the result of 2 nearby volcano eruptions millions of years ago. The ash settled and formed tuff and the lava became rock. Years of erosion by wind, water and ice has eroded away the soil and exposed tuff and left these unusual shape pillars. The inside of these pillars were the more porous tuff so man could carve out caves.
Goreme was used as a necropolis (burial ground/cemetery) during the Roman Times.
In the early years of the Middle Ages it became an important Christian Centre with a vast number of churches and monasteries. The area is now protected as an open air museum.
We are able to enter many of the caves and see how the monks lived and where they worshipped. Many of the original paintings and frescos are still seen.
After a couple of hours here it has warmed up to be another beautiful day. Next we are taken to a carpet co-op. we see the ladies sitting at the looms and they demonstrate how the carpets are made. It's hard for us to see how they can possibly follow the pattern.very intricate.
Next we see how they get the silk fibre from the silk worm cocoon. I was or at least my finger was part of the demonstration to show the strength of the fibre.
Ok now to the showroom. We are seated around the edge of the room. Offered drinks, wine, beer, Raki, coffee , tea etc and they are also going to serve us Turkish Pizza or Pide for lunch. We are shown a huge variety of carpets, we ate lunch, drank their wine and at the first opportunity, left the building before the sales men could get near us. The carpets are magnificent and you have to appreciate the amount of time that goes into the making and that is obviously reflected in the price. I think if you were in the market for carpet, then it would be a great place to buy, but we are not so were happy to go out and look at the interesting scenery.
Back on the bus, Omer has selected an afternoon of sightseeing, photo taking and shopping at the road side markets that are everywhere when we stop.
We have some great photos of the Cappodocia landscape, but as usual the photos don't really do the area justice. You might just have to visit for yourself if you have not already.
We also go to a ceramic workshop and watch an unusual wine decanter Beijing hand made on a traditional foot powered potters wheel. Then into the plate making section, the hand painting section ( good eyesight required there) and then finally the showroom/ shop. We are tempted to purchase a wine decanter but, then we started thing from a practical point of view and much to the disappointment of the sales girl we walked away. A number of purchases were made though by the group so everyone was happy.
2 more photo stops,( it doesn't get boring looking at this landscape) and then back to the hotel.
We have a couple of hours to rest or swim or play tennis before dinner at 7 and then most of us are back on the bus at 8.30pm to go to a local nightclub for drinks and folk dancing and belly dancing.
A few adventurous people are not going to the club as they have a very early start to take balloon ride over the area. It was on our agenda when we left home, but the reality of getting up at 4 am and squashing into a balloon basket with 20 people kind of put us off the idea. It is no longer offered as an optional choice with Insight so although they had to organise it themselves, Omer still assisted as I think it was important to him that everyone was back in time for departure on Thursday.
The nightclub....... Well it was in a cave (man made). It was divided into 6 parts with long tables going up in a tiered fashion so that it didn't matter where you sat, you ad a pretty good view of the dance floor.
All the drinks are included tonight so Omer suggested we drink up so we can make lots of noise on the way home.
On the table was a bottle of warm white wine, red wine, soft drink, water and Raki.
It was as good a time as any to try the Raki so I had a small one as opposed to other people who were downing it like the locals! Because the wine was warm we opt for beer and the first one is not much colder than the wine but they did get colder. Beer.... No lemonade!
The folk dancing is very good the dancers are professional and put on a good show. It is obviously put on purely for the tourist and involves a bit of audience participation which is always fun watching other people as long as it doesn't involve me.
The last item we are staying for is the Belly Dancer. Well she could certainly move!! Glenn had a near Amsterdam experience with a certain part of her anatomy but unfortunately I was not quick enough on the camera!
It was a fun night. Hopefully no headaches tomorrow although it would not be surprising if there were.