Balloons at Sunrise in Goreme

---

Upon arriving in Cappadocia we found that it's kind of like the Badlands of Southern Alberta, except that here they call hoodoos "Fairy Chimneys". Anyways, it's kind of interesting because they have homes and churches that were carved out of the rock formations as well as complete underground cities where they used to hide from invaders. We only went part of the way into the underground city before turning around after our guide told us about all the areas that had been closed off due to cave-ins, "but these areas are all safe..." Everyone else made it through okay, but it made us a little nervous knowing that we could be 50 meters underground with thousands of tourists on floors above us...

The churches were really cool because they date back to the 10th-11th century. The frescos kind of reminded us of the rock chuches we saw in Ethiopia. We're coming to the realization that we really need to take some history courses since the areas we're travelling through have such a rich history.

While in Istanbul, we met a couple who had just come from Goreme and they highly recommended that if we couldn't afford to go in a hot air balloon, then we should wake up super early and watch the balloons come up for sunrise. So that's what we did. We woke up at 5am and headed to the view point just down the road from where we were staying and watched as approximately 50 hot air balloons set up and headed into the sky for sunrise. It was a really nice moment.

---

Photos

Open air museum
Lots of rock churches

Open air museum
So many churches

Laundry
The never ending task...