Today was a very early morning start! I was up at 4:45 to be ready, dressed and in the lobby for our transfer for the hot air balloon ride. I didn't sleep overly well as I was completely paranoid about missing the flight!
Morning came and we were off for the balloon ride and I have to admit it easily ranks top as one of my best life experiences. The views were breathtaking and all the other balloons on the air made for some significantly awesome views.
We then came back to the hotel for breakfast and to change, we were off at 9am for the Göreme Open Air Museum or the Churches of Göreme. Many of the early Christians made their homes in the lava rocks because it was easy to carve out a home. They also created churches because they had to be able to hide quickly and remain unnoticed.
Some of the churches were primitive and others very detailed! Almost a progressive improvement of fresco paintings. They were all very beautiful. Unfortunately there were no photos allowed in the churches but I did spot some of the more primary stuff outside and snapped a pic.
What was not cool was the number of tourists at this museum. It was ridiculous, big bus loads of impatient and annoying tourists. I was very happy to be leaving when it was time to go.
We then headed to a carpet store and got the speech on Turkish carpets. It was interesting but I'm not quite at the point where I have $600 and nothing better to buy with it than a Turkish carpet... maybe next time I'm in Turkey. The free "while you buy" Turkish coffee was quite nice!
From there we headed to lunch and I had a Turkish pizza (for the life of me I can't remember the proper name for it) and it was super long and extremely delicious.
At this point I started to cough and cough and cough and cough. I have developed one of those nagging persistent coughs, so much so that I had to invest (and I mean invest, they cost a freakin' fortune) in Turkish cough drops. Not bad... Exactly the same in Canada.
But I wasn't going to miss anything! So I carried on and we visited the Underground City of Derinkuyu. It was an entire city underground. They raised livestock, made wine, even created a graveyard down there. There were tiny tiny passage ways where you had to almost crawl through. One of the over 6' guys actually crab-walked down the last bit of the narrowest cave.
So in the end it really was Phobia day because in the morning we worked on fear of heights and in the afternoon we worked on fear of enclosed places.
From there we had some free time, my plan was to swim in the pool but the water was freakin' freezing! At 7pm we were then off to a birthday dinner! I wasn't very hungry so I had some soup. I seriously need to know how to make Göreme Wedding Soup, it's delicious!!
On the advice of one of my tour-mates I asked for some hot water, lemon, and honey in the hopes of lessen my cough. The waiters brought all three in separate glasses and watch as an mixed them all together. I think this may have been a first time for them too! It helped but once I start going, I hack and hack and hack. That didn't stop me from going our for a quick drink with the others going out after dinner. I let Mete, our tour leader, convince me that Jägermeister would help with my cough... ha ha. But it was nice to be out!
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