Blogs from Göreme, Cappadocia, Central Anatolia, Turkey, Middle East

Like my friend Nuno said, when you go to Turkey you must visit someother place beyond Istanbul - he actually stayed in Turkey during 20 days and had the chance to drive the whole western coast from Istanbul to Antalya and also got a flight to Central Anatolia. From what I saw in his pictures Cappadocia seemed a very interesting and unusual place to visit after Istanbul. We didn't had many days in Turkey, but we managed to buy a bus ticket from Istanbul to Goreme - average round-trip costs 100 TL (less than 50 eur). There are lots of travel agencies in Otogar - Istanbul's main bus sation. We bought tickets from Suha and Nevsehir - it's a 12-hour journey during the night, both companies offered a snack (coffee, juice, crackers and a muffin) and ... read more

From Istanbul, we arrived in the early morning in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey, via an overnight train. Ankara was established as such by Ataturk in 1920 when he chose it as his base of operations in the struggle for independence. It was declared the Turkish capital in 1923. The city’s position in the centre of Turkey made it better suited as capital than Istanbul, both physically and symbolically. We visited the Anatolian Civilization Museum of Ankara which is housed in a beautifully restored 15th-century bedesten (market vault). The museum has displays of artifacts from the earlier Anatolian civilizations: Paleolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Neolithic, the Bronze Age, Assyrian, Hittite, Phrygian, Uralian and Lydian AND Greek and Roman artifacts as well. You name it; they had an artifact for that era. Our journey continued to Cappadocia-Goreme. Our ... read more

Oh, wow! Today Ernest and I had our first hot air balloon ride, and what a ride it was! We had to get up at 5:00 am and it was cold, but once we got to the launch site, it was worth it. There are several balloon ride companies but we were booked with the oldest one, Kappadokya Air, and we had the pilot trainer as our pilot. Getting in the basket was a little difficult for Ernest and I but the crew was great and lifted E up and helped me swing my big rear over. The hot gas warmed us up so the trip was very comfortable. We rode up and down the Cappadocia valley. The rock formations here from the volcanic ash are so unique it is a World UNESCO site. The pictures ... read more

Wednesday 21st Sept - Scooter Safari Breakfast at the hotel again this morning. I was up at about 8am and managed to see a late traveling hot air balloon floating over Goreme. Such a cool sight! I asked Zak if he wanted to go up in a balloon but he declined saying it was too expensive. It is pretty expensive, but at 120 euros it's actually cheaper than what we paid 6 years ago to do it. I think that is because competition has stepped up, when we went last time there were about 6 balloons all up, now there are 118 that go up daily! Unreal! Not a bad rate of growth over just a few years. Anyway, I think we could have stretched the budget to cover the flight, but perhaps Zak is still ... read more

Sunday 18th Sept - Ankara to Goreme, Cappadocia After breakfast and thanks & farewell to our hosts, we caught a taxi to the nearest metro station and caught a metro that took us to the bus station. Naively, we arrived at the bus station at 5 minutes before 11 thinking we would be able to get tickets on the 11am bus out of Ankara to Cappadocia. It's Sunday morning and as soon as I saw the amount of people crowding the bus terminal I realized that we were pretty stupid thinking we would get a on the bus we wanted without having pre-purchased tickets. There were just 2 different bus companies that were going directly to Goreme, but of course now it was just minutes, even seconds, before 11 and I was not surprised when both ... read more