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Published: June 30th 2017
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Another action packed day in Turkey today! We started out with the usual type breakfast in our hotel (hard boiled egg, cucumber, tomatoes, yogurt, honey, bread, and Turkish tea), left our hotel about 9 am, and were off to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. it was an amazing museum, very well curated, which we enjoyed a lot. We didn't have too much time there but we still managed to see most of it, and leave time for a quick visit to the lovely gift shop where I bought a beautiful necklace (based on an Islamic design), and Susan got a bracelet. The museum contained some really amazing stone reliefs, and carvings, pottery and metal sculptures, plus ancient cave paintings.
We left the museum for the long drive to Goreme, stopping for lunch at a place along the highway. We then made a stop at Salt Lake - Tuz Golu, which was pretty cool. We walked along the solid salt-edge of the lake. It looked like a sea of white. There were cheesy posters advertising the qualities of the cosmetics and salt scrubs they make here, and we did buy some salt scrub at the shop. Susan and I enjoyed a
Lori outside the museum.
The museum buildings are from the 1400s. Turkish coffee, then we continued on our way. The next stop was the underground city of Derinkuyu, which was really amazing. It got cooler the farther underground we went, and some of the passages were very small and narrow, and some so low we had to bend over. It's not known exactly how old the underground city is, but it was likely used as protection for many centuries perhaps starting around the 5th C, until the early 20th C when it was occasionally still used. Apparently it could accommodate as many as 20,000 people (only half is accessible to tourists now). It was quite steep climbing back up through the passageways. Some village women were selling hand made dolls at the entrance and we purchased one, which we later gave to Susan's cousin in London. (We later thought we should have bought one of the small ones to use as a Christmas tree ornament). One of the women offered us some of the bread she was eating, and I ignored my initial concern about lack of cleanliness and accepted her kind offer. It was delicious! I do love Turkish bread.
As we drove into Cappadocia we were all glued
to the windows marvelling at the amazing landscape. We stopped at a viewpoint for photos, and continued into Goreme, finally arriving at our hotel about 7 pm. Our hotel is a ways out of town, so we all went for dinner together at a place just down the road. So far we have had all our meals together, at cafeteria type places or at set menu places where tour groups tend to go. I'm not crazy about set menu places, but the food has been quite good. This evening I had trout which was really good. Not eating meat does limit my options. We sent a few emails using the hotel computers (that sounds pretty funny now in 2017 but back then there was no free wifi and we didn't even bring our cell phones with us). Now to bed!
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