This was a room next to the ladies bathroom at an airport. We saw some dogs and come cats traveling with their owners.
In our last hotel a medium poodle-type dog actually sat on a chair at the table with a couple every evening and at breakfast.
At Istanbul Airport again. Thought the eateries were hilarious.
Arrived in Cappadocia via high-end transport.
NOTICE THAT RING!!
For two days we stayed in a cave hotel which was 700 years old!! So cool! Yes! That’s a hot tub! And I used it!
The landscape is surreal. It’s full of caves and covered with rocks left behind by volcanic eruptions.
The first picture is called The Three Sisters chimneys In Urgup. The pointy rock formation happens with one volcanic eruption; but a second one (100’s of years later, perhaps) sets rock on top of the first formations.
The white might look like snow, but it was in he 90’s. The white is just bright white rock. We thought one looked like an alligator.
The pigeon poop is used for fertilizer. The people around made small holes in the caves in order to get the pigeons to roost in them, so their poop can more easier be gathered.
The evil eye superstition is all over Turkey and Greece. It is supposed to stave of evil spirits and bad luck.
Apparently people think hanging one on this tree also wards off bad stuff.
We went into the cave dwellings called the Kaymakli Underground City, where Christians hid from the Romans. It was one of the largest and deepest of 200 others in Cappadocia. There were 9 levels and we just were able to go into only the top four. That was enough since I whacked my head a couple times.
They had wineries here and when their water supply ran dry, they drank wine. This was a big rock they used as a doorway and they made the ceilings of the passageways low so the soldiers would not be able to enter.
This was their grave site.
There is always a mill stone, used to grind wheat and cereals.
Another winery.
Some cute guys and stone stairways.
Two cute girls. Too cramped for me. Rock everywhere.
Can’t believe we got all this for breakfast!! Plus we ordered an omelet.
CLICK.
Liz met the tour at 3:15 AM!!! to take this hot air balloon ride. I was happy not to go.
Two days before in this same area, a gust of wind upset the balloon as it was landing and squashed the pilot dead under the basket. But the other 19 were only injured, so Liz thought those were good odds. The day before and the day after, balloons did not fly due to high winds; so Liz lucked out and was happy to partake. Her pilot landed the balloon ON THE TRAILER! I’ve never seen that before.
We went to a monastery where they started living inside caves, and for hundreds of years kept adding rooms until it housed all religious people and students. 10th to 13th centuries.
This was the ‘table and chairs’ where they ate — like in the Last Supper.
I always gotta get up on those rocks!
Tour Guide, Gigi, let us go free and we couldn’t stop climbing and taking artsy pictures.
We climbed up and through this tunnel … and then couldn’t figure out where it was when it was time to come down.
More superstitions. People write a note/wish on paper and tie it to a tree where it ends up looking like this.
Here are more fairy chimneys. But Liz and I took to calling the area Penis Rock. Just sayin’.
Just surreal.
I’d like to say that was Liz and I up at the top. Alas, that’s something I would have done ten years ago; not now.
Artsy photo of a rock through a rock.
I didn’t have a backache. I was trying to get to looking as tall as Liz. I think I did it!
