Snow Day in Cappadocia

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Well, what can I say besides Iḿ snowed in at Travellers Cave Pension hotel in Cappadocia today, the day we were supposed to go on a tour of this city and see everything it had to offer. We were supposed to go and see all the churches built into the rocks that lay underground, and see the underground city where people still live today in caves underground. It isn't all that bad though because our hotel is amazing and today turned into a nice, relaxing day where I was able to read my new book by James Patterson called Cross and write in my journal! I also want to mention that the owner of this hostel is the nicest guy I´ve met so far while traveling, as far as someone who Iḿ giving my money to that is. He seems to be in his late 20ś or early 30ś, but he acts like heś around 40 or 50. I first noticed his generosity yesterday when we went to get ourselves a Turkish bath. I had asked him earlier in the day how much it would cost for a turkish bath with massage and facial mask included and he told me 35 TL. So Cami and I went to this spa and told the man working there that we wanted 2 turkish baths, but he told us the price was 50 TL.... He said that 35 TL was the winter price and 50 TL was the summer price, and we were on the summer price now, although itś snowing here at present. So we went back to our hostel and told the manager that we wanted to do the bath for 35, thinking maybe we went to the wrong place or something. The manager then called the spa to tell them we wanted 2 baths, and when the spa told him that the price would be 50 TL indeed and not 35 TL, he told the spa that he had made a mistake and told us the wrong price and somehow convinced the cheap bastards to let us go back and to the baths for 35 TL!

The spa was very nice, and the turkish bath was amazing. We started out by going into a sauna for around 30 minutes and sweating out all of our toxins. There were several people in the sauna once Cami and I entered, and they were all in conversation. There were around 6 people from Spain talking to ladies from Canada, who were originally from India, or so I guessed by the look of them. The 2 ladies from canada asked one man from Spain where he had traveled to and he said Egypt, China, South America Etc... Then one lady asked him if he had ever been to India? When the man replied no and the lady informed everyone that her and her mother (the 2 ladies from Canada) were from India originally, I saw my opening into the conversation. I decided to show off a little bit by showing them that I knew a bit about India myself. I jumped into the conversation by asking her what language she spoke from India, kind of a bold and strange question if you do not know any languages spoken in India. She turned and looked at me, slightly confused, but before she could answer I answered for her. "Hindi?" I asked. Her eyes got wide and she excitedly proclaimed "yes!" and immediately asked if I had been there. The rest of the time in the sauna was spent by Cami and I talking to her about India and what we had seen and done there. It is really interesting to see how quickly someone will open up to you and be ready for conversation if you know a little something about their heritage, and it made me that much more grateful for my time spent in India. After sitting in the sauna for a long while, we were called out one by one to start with our massages. I was the last one out and was really glad to finally be called because I was sweating a lot! I was sat down around the outside of the circular marble platform in the middle, next to one of the facets. The man poured warm water on me, surely to wash away the sweat, and then began to rub down my whole body with what can be described as a softer type of sand paper, in rag-glove form. This is where things get a bit disturbing concerning my personal hygine, although my sister experienced the same thing. The combination of soft skin from the sauna and sand paper like rag-glove made for balls and balls of dead skin that were pulled off our bodies and visibly forming all over ourselves. It was disgusting, but obviously had to be done. After the man finished this, he poured water on me once again to wash away the dead skin balls, and then laid me on the center marble platform for my massage. The massage was like any other massage, except they use a lot of suds and soap instead of oil, I have never felt cleaner! On top of our soap massage we took a shower right after, then swam in their perfectly tempered pool. After this we went back to our hostel for dinner to eat, and our managers generosity continues!

We ate dinner slowly and watched the soccer game on TV with some of the locals which was really fun! Then we ordered 2 apple teas (apple cider, and the manager was sure to shake out our table cloth before bringing our tea, so nice! After tea we went to bed hoping of course to get up early for breakfast the next morning and head out at 9 AM for the tour of the city.... wrong... I woke the next morning and got out of the shower only to look out the window and find snow everywhere. So after waking Cami and informing her the tour was a no-go (mainly due to the fact it had hiking involved), we trudged upstairs to the restaurant for breakfast. We had pretty much decided we would not be doing anything because of the snow when suddenly it started to get sunny out! An over excited Cami suddenly decides we should rent a motorcycle and drive to the underground city ourselves... Classic Cami not thinking. 5 minutes into our motorcycle ride it begins to snow again, and hard. I am driving and pissed off, extremely cold from the wind and snow and unable to read the terrible map given to us by the rental store. Cami tries to stay enthusiastic, but as I begin to get more pissed off and start to drive faster she rethinks her idea, mainly for 2 reasons. Firstly because it was freezing cold and she could not take it anymore, secondly because she was scared for her life since I was driving like a maniac. It is nice to know that if need be, I can easily scare some sense into my sister. So Cami pounds on my back and as I pull over she screams in my ear, "Lets go back, I am freezing!" So without a word I turn around and go back to our hostel, moving really fast. I wanted to scare Cami enough so that she would have to change her pants when we got back. We made it back safely at least, unfortunately Camiś pants were only wet from the snow, nothing more. We hung out in the restaurant the rest of the day, trying to warm up from our little adventure, before catching the bus back to Istanbul....

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