Last night in Cappadocia, let’s make it a good one!

---

I got up at 5 am to see if I could catch a glimpse of the wonder that I was told the hot air balloons would be. Sadly, I got up too early to catch them and in my early morning sleepy state I didn’t realize it. I went back to bed then got up a little later to make it down for breakfast (more yogurt please!). Today was a relaxing day with nothing on the agenda, Fatih had mentioned that we could visit a nice Hamam here and after a little exploring the group decided that would be a great idea! Marcus kept asking me what I wanted for my birthday so once I realized that we would be going I told him I wanted my stay at the Hamam for my birthday! (That and a 30 minute olive oil massage! Hey, you only turn 25 once ; )

The way a Turkish Bath (hamam) works is there is a section for men and a section for women. So Marcus and Brett were led to the first floor downstairs and Dora, Taylee, and I were led to the second floor downstairs (this place was huge!). We were assigned a locker and started to change into our bathing suits when an English woman who had just finished the Hamam experience told us that its totally fine to wear a bathing suit but that it’s better to go in your birthday suit. So the 3 of us thought that sounded good so we shimmied out of everything and were stark naked under our towels.

Our first stop was the mud mask where they painted mud on your face (luckily the non-smelly kind!) then it was off to the sauna, one of the girls that worked there showed us the way and set the timer. It was nice and hot but not unbearable. We all chilled (haha) out in there and chatted for the next 15 minutes. Then we walked out into a giant marble room, with a giant (about 25 feet in diameter) raised slab in the middle. We then laid out on the slab and cooled off a little (it was still very warm) then jumped in the luke warm pool for a bit of a swim and we drank fresh squeezed orange juice (ahh this is the life!) Then the women came out (one for each of us) and instructed us to lay down on the giant marble slab and they got to work with their scrubby mitts scrubbing us down! Since all of your pores are open from sitting in the sauna the dirt and dead skin just rolls off of you. After their handy-work I have never been so clean in my life! I was literally black with all of the gunk they were scrubbing off of me, it was disgusting! Then they took a cloth sack that was saturated with soap, they did a swirly thing and captured some air in the bag and pressed it down on us and it created massive amounts of suds! The women doing our scrubbing and soaping were very interesting as they would slap our backs randomly and I think Taylee got a few smacks on the bum! We were all laughing because it was just a little weird, but fun!

We then showered off and it was time for our 30 minute olive oil massage (couldn’t wait!) we got massaged down and it was the quickest 30 minutes of my life, it was so nice to just lay there and be pampered (my first ever real massage). It was also nice since after having your skin scrubbed and soaped it was really dry, but the olive oil really brought it to life and was a nice finishing touch to the whole process!

We met back upstairs where the guys had been done for about half an hour and were playing backgammon (no one can get enough!) We all were relaxed and tired and didn’t feel like doing much, so what do people do when they don’t feel like doing anything? . . . Find something to eat! We found a nice café that had bean bag chairs to sit in and we ordered some lunch. Marcus and I got this dish famous in Cappadocia since it is cooked in a clay pot. They bring it out to you all sealed up and then take a hammer to the pot and break it in half and your meal is inside! (to be honest we didn’t exactly know what we had ordered and when it came out Marcus and I gave each other the look of “this should be interesting”). Our lazy lunch was great and then we went on the search for a few souvenirs since it was our last day in Cappadocia (and we felt like should be a little productive).

It was a relaxing night since we the night before was a big one. Fatih recommended we go to a restaurant he knew of that was outside of town that was known for its Kofte. So Hasan drove all of us to this little hole in the wall restaurant for dinner. Marcus was in heaven since he ordered the Kofte eckmek – bread and meatballs! Earlier we all chipped in and bought Fatih and Hasan each a bottle of Raki as a thank you for a wonderful tour, and we presented the bottles to them at dinner.

After dinner we all went back to our rooms to catch up on some sleep since it was going to be a long day on the bus the next day. Earlier Fatih taught me how to count in Turkish, once I had the basics down he would type a number on his phone then I would say it in Turkish. I felt like a 5 year old since I had to think really hard about how to say 2,222,222, but once I would say the number I would be proud of myself! At one point I was supposed to say 1100 and I thought about it and said the equivalent of eleven hundred in Turkish. Fatih gave me the weirdest look and said that didn’t make any sense in Turkish and I had just said eleven hands since the word for hundred has many meanings, and that you have to say one thousand one hundred (learn something new every day!)

I went to bed early since we had to be on the bus at 6 am the next day, but I was excited since that was supposedly the time to get up to see the hot air balloons in the morning. I had failed the other mornings to see them so I was lucky to have one more attempt!

B

---

Photos

Lunch after the Hamam
Cool bean bags!

Dinner
This is where they cooked everything!

Kofte Eckmek
Marcus can die happy now :)

Comments

[IveBeenThere]

price of Hamam?
do you remember what this visit to the hamam cost?

[B bop]

It was 40 YTL for the experience, and 1 YTL for a minute of olive oil massage