Ballooning and Burrowing

Today, we got up early to complete a massive bucket list item for a lot of people, especially in Turkey. We would see the sunrise from the sky. We awoke up at about 6:00 am and got ready and headed for the bus. At 6:30, we headed slightly out of town, in the freezing cold, and waited for our hot air balloon to prepare for lift off. While we waited, we got to see the amazing spectacle that Capaddocia has become famous for. Even from the ground, the display is incredible and well worth the trip. It is mind-blowing the number of people that travel all the way to this small town for the hot air balloons. Each fits 20, and there are generally around 150 in the air each day. Today was 156, and it's not even peak time. With the sunrise in the background and the flames highlighting the beautiful colours of the balloons, the sight is difficult to describe. It was something I didn't expect to be so amazing, but boy, was I blown away. Once we took off, I was on the side of the balloon that had all the girls. As such, it was essentially one big conveyer belt rotating between all the different possible combinations of girls' photos. I got some for myself and allowed the girls to have their moment, while I simply looked out over the city. The town is beautiful, and seeing it from the sky produces a unique experience where you get to truly realise the quantity of houses and ancient buildings that were once simply carved into the rocks. Even from the sky, some of these monuments are so large that you can see how the structure contains many levels, windows, entrances, and all the rest. We got a spectacular view of Capaddocia castle, as the balloon guides gave us a low fly over a small section of town, and this was incredible. It was a whole city within the mountain. Photos are the only way I could even begin to describe it. Although we wouldn't get to explore the castle anymore than what we saw from the sky, we would get to explore similar structures further outside of town that are much more intricate and complex than the castle. In fact, upon landing and being picked up, this was the next stop as we headed toward kaymakli.

The underground city is hard to describe, as it was simply a seemingly never-ending maze filled with dead ends, narrow spaces, long corridors, and little to no planning. You could so easily get endlessly lost, but we had a lot of fun, and it's a very interesting structure. Essentially it was constructed by Muslims during the occupation from the Roman Empire, so they used this rural, desolate area, filled with easily mined rock to build into the hills where they could live, pray and exist in peace. Later on, Christians used them, once again, to escape Roman persecution. It is interesting to see, however, that even these structures change depending on the religious group that occupies the area. There was little in terms of urban planning during construction, so essentially, if another house needed to be constructed, they just picked a direction and began digging. Given this use to accommodate 3,000 people, you can see how it would become a labyrinth of rock and holes. We spent a good hour and a half just walking around, but we can only see a small fraction of the otherwise relatively untouched areas that remain this way due to the safety concerns that exist as you go deeper. There are another 5 layers below the layer that we got to explore, which is mind-blowing to me. It was truly a maze and must have been awe-inspiring to whoever rediscovered it. The one disadvantage was the fact I had to duck the whole time I was walking through the spaces. They must have been much shorter back then as there were only a few sections in which I could fully stand up. Eventually, we began to start our ascent back to the surface and head towards lunch.

After our late lunch, we then began to complete our next activity of the day. Jewellery. I was still yet to find good presents for the family and saw this as the perfect opportunity for exactly that, but I was pretty disappointed by the selection. It was mostly very expensive jewellery, or it looked the same pieces you would find in the Grand Bazaar. There was nothing particularly stand out, and so I left myself to wander around while the girls spent all their money.

Up next, Pottery. Upon arrival, we were greeted with coffee, tea, or wine, a common and very welcome practice in Turkey. We were then given a brief demonstration of how the clay pots are moulded before eventually going through the cooking and hardening processes and eventually painting and drying. We could see the different workshops for each and got to see the product slowly take shape before he eventually took us through to the showroom. He walked us through the different products, and I was quite impressed but couldn't buy much, once again, since I was worried that the flimsy clay would just break. He then turned off the lights and showed how some of the products can glow in the dark, a small novelty providing an extreme cost. It was still cool to see. In the end, some people bought products, which I'm glad to see, given the time and effort they put into their demonstration. I was just not one of them.

We had one final destination before heading to the hillside for some wine watching the sunset over Capaddocia. This was a single rock formation that is apparently quite a busy tourist attraction. There is a famous rock that looks like a camel, but i didn't really see it, and it probably wasn't worth the journey just for that. Either way, we didn't spend too long here before eventually getting back on the bus, picking up some wine, and then heading to a viewpoint looking over Capaddocia to see the sunset over the city. This was really cool. I think the fact that we got to witness the sunrise with all the balloons and then see the sunset over the city really rounded out the day perfectly. Watching the sun dim and the city light up was really beautiful. And despite everyone being very tired, we were all in an incredibly good mood as we chilled with our wines. Many began to be keen for a big night out, but we have a birthday tomorrow and so figured we'd save ourselves for that. As such, we headed back to the hotel, chilled in the girls' room briefly before all going to bed.Read more