Advertisement
Published: June 30th 2017
Edit Blog Post
Today was a great day of beautiful hikes and being scrubbed within an inch of our lives at a Turkish bath!
After breakfast we headed out to the Red Valley for the first of our hikes. It was really beautiful. It was quite slippery on the path heading down into the Valley, particularly for some of the group who didn't really have appropriate footwear. Susan and I wore our hikers so we were fine. I think Peregrine downplayed the hikes in the trip notes and should have made it more clear what they entailed. It really was a bit too strenuous for at least one member of our group.
Part way through the hike we rounded a corner and suddenly there is a little cafe where we enjoyed a well deserved rest and a fresh pomegranate-orange juice. There were several of these places along the way where you could get juice or tea or pick up a few little souvenirs. They would just suddenly appear in the middle of the trail. We hiked for a few hours, then we met the mini-bus and headed to Uchisar for lunch. We had a fabulous lunch of Turkish pizza. Chris and Grant,
and Susan and I sat outside and enjoyed the lovely weather. We shared a delicious vegetarian pizza, the others also had some kind of meat pizza, and we had apple pizza for dessert. The apple pizza was extremely tasty - not too sweet. This area is known for its apples. Chris had soda water to drink, which she referred to as "water with gas"! Ha! Apparently that is what Australians call it. Funny.
We then headed to a nearby jewellery factory in Uchisar, where I bought a really nice pair of silver turquoise earrings (faceted turquoise in a leaf shape).
We then headed off on our second hike in the Love Valley. This didn't have as spectacular scenery as the Red Valley, and the hike was more strenuous. Very enjoyable though. We saw a very old church called the Rose Church. We passed lots of fruit trees (apple, pear quince, and blackberries) and Nihat picked samples for us to enjoy (we also had some grapes from grape vines).
After a couple of hours hiking in the Love Valley we headed back to the Hotel Ciner, and did some laundry (our clothes were very dusty and sweaty from
the hikes). We showered, then it was time for our Turkish bath. We went to Elis Haman in Goreme. There were separate areas for men and women, obviously. You cannot be modest at a Turkish bath! Or if you are, you will quickly get over it. We were scrubbed and massaged to within an inch of our lives. We had a face mask, then a sauna, then a scrub (it's a bit of an odd experience getting scrubbed from head to toe while buck naked), then a massage. There was very little in the way of cover ups during all this experience so I saw more of my fellow travellers than I really wanted to! However, overall it was a very nice experience and I feel extremely clean now. All the dust of the hikes has definitely been scrubbed away.
After the Turkish bath we met up with the male members of our group and headed off to dinner. I had an excellent spicy veggie dish. Tomorrow we have a morning hike in the Ilhara Valley, then we are off on our drive to Konya, stopping at a Caravanserai and for lunch. It's been beautiful weather so far, sunny
and warm but not too hot. This is a perfect time to visit Turkey. I'm pretty tired now and it's 12:30 am so I'll finish. Oh yes, there was a bombing in Ankara (either today or yesterday) which killed 3 people. Very shocking. I'm glad we weren't there when it happened.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.067s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0335s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb