One good thing about arriving on an overnight bus very early is if you get to a really cool place like Cappadocia you get to see the sunrise. Not only did we get to see the sunrise but also with all these hot balloons rising into the air. Unfortunately, Jess was still a sick puppy so she did not enjoy it as much. Our first day of the Cappadocia tour started with a van pickup and then a bunch of Koreans joining our tour. We were the only whitties besides a couple of French. The tour drove us all around the area of Cappadocia which has an interesting geographic history. The volcanic eruptions that happened millions of years ago left these mounds that have slowly eroded over the years and created a “chimney” like affect. The Turks call them fairy chimneys, not sure why. Many of them have been hollowed out over the years and ancient people used to live in them. The government took ownership in the 1950s so no one lives in them anymore but some still have cafes, hotels, etc. The pictures really do not do justice to how the area looks but you at least get an idea. The area also looks a lot like southwestern Idaho, strange as it may seem. Lots of agriculture including grapes, apples and supposedly the potato capital of Turkey! Huh, I said, no one grows a better potato then Idaho!
By the end of the tour, Jess was still feeling sick so we went back to the hotel, she went right to bed at 6:30 and I went about 8:00. We awoke early to see the sunrise again and the balloons. It was not as vivid as the morning before but still impressive. We when we got back to the hotel the night before we realized this Korean family and their daughter who worked in New York were staying with us and were taking the second day tour. We met them the next morning at the van and were off. The second day was not as exciting for a tour and we could have done it ourselves. At the end of the day, we packed up our things, walked around town and waited for our overnight bus to Istanbul.
Cappadocia was one of our favorite places in Turkey because of the landscape. It was quite different then anything we had seen on our journey over the summer. We were tired and our journey was coming to an end but we had one last stop, the energetic and hectic city of Istanbul.
