Yabadabadoo in Cappadocia

There I was, lying beneath Alice's bobbly bed on the sleeper train, constantly fearing that it was going to unlatch and squish me. But fear not, as I am able to write a blog post, I am obviously not dead.
We arrived in Ankara (the capital of Turkey, I apologise for my previous spelling error) at approximately 8am the next morning. Now, although I stated in my previous post that Ankara seemed like the geometrical grid formed capital of Australia, Canberra, I found it quite different in many respects.
1. Where we stopped for breakfast was amazingly cheap, the staff we amazingly lovely AND they gave us stacks of free food (apparently spending roughly 1 dollar on breakfast was considered great service for them).
2. Ankara is quite a hilly place.
3. Walking into an 'internet cafe' in Ankara is like stepping into the 1980's where computers are brick type objects sitting in little grey stained cubicles.
4. There are practically no women around.
5. To fix Alice's watch, the man used a stapler.
6. When walking into a cafe- all people stare at you as you enter, stare at you as you drink your powdered milk and instant coffee, stop staring after they get bored of staring at you playing cards and are extremely friendly in ordering what they think you would like to eat.
7. A whole mob of football fans (all male of course) stop and try to talk to you in turkish. Realising that we did not in fact speak turkish, they continued to talk to us in turkish before a security guard ushered them away and tried to tell us in turkish to go sit in another area.
Overall, I did quite like Ankara as an experience.
After a lot of sleeping in a hire car and Izzy poking me to wake up, I saw that we had arrived in Cappadocia (or in turkish 'Kapadokya') in a town called Uchisar. This is what I saw:

Once we arrived to the reception of where we were going to stay there was apparently some confusion. The parents were supposed to be sleeping in caves, and the children in apartment type rooms. Now, after a long drive from Ankara, all everyone wanted was just to get to the rooms. But, apparently we got a good deal. We were all in a cave house that the owner of the hotel/cave/apartment business grew up in. This is where we stayed:

The next day we got up and had a complementary buffet breakfast equipped with yoghurt, muesli, turkish bread, homemeade pot jams, pot honey, pot marmelade, nutella, pomegranite, baklava, halva, cheeses, cucumber, banana, apple, orange, grapefruit, dried fruit, turkish cake...well you get the idea. It was pretty damn yummy. After our massive buffet breakfast we headed off for a walk to the next town Goreme. It was a beautiful day and the walk was just exquisite. 

After walking up the last big hill, we had reached our destination; the open air museum. 

You know, I love donkeys and I love camels...but this sign really made me love the turkish way of advertising:

At this point, we were all feeling a bit peckish, so we stopped in Goreme for lunch where we were seated on turkish cushions and rugs, with a round table in the middle. Lunch was amazingly good.

Walking through Goreme was beautiful as we were exposed to a rug shop, the coolest yellow combi and the flinestones cave hotel.

That night, we were planning to go to the 'Hamam', which a turkish bath, however we all felt a bit tired and decided to have a lovely cave cooked meal and play some cards. 

I woke up annoyingly early the next day and for some reason decided, hey i'm now up, i might as well go and watch the sunrise. Apparently the best way is by hot air balloon (which funny enough, Frazer and Gina were doing that morning) but I was quite happy sitting on the roof of my cave.

(If you look closely in the third picture you can see a hot air balloon. There were so many on that morning.)

That day, after our brilliant buffet breakfast, we decided that we should take a trip to the Kaymakli underground city. I discovered that I didn't have claustrophobia, which was handy seeing as though I was in a squished small underground cave and it gave me a chance to listen to our guide Mustafa (many a time referred to as Mufasa). He told us all about how the underground cities were used by the early christians, before the religion was accepted. The first level was used for the animals and there were spots in the cave where they would be tied up and spots where water and food could be placed. Further on in the cave we came upon a door which was made entirely out of stone. Back when the cave was occupied, the  occupants of the cave would hide from their enemies in there and when they tried to enter, they would all go behind the stone doors, and the enemies couldn't follow them. The doors were cleverly made so that the enemies couldn't access it from the outside. Behind the door was a crevice for the occupants of the cave to use, to be able to move the door and maneuver around to utilise the hole located in the centre of the stone door. The centre of the stone door was made so that they could shoot arrows out and kill the enemies on the other side. Furthermore, the door was built on a slant, so once the enemies had gone, all the occupants of the cave would have to do is lift the rock holding the door, and it would simply roll back open.

Going down further into the depths of the cave via steep and very small, tight pathways we found ourselves being directed to look at a very deep hole on one side of the pathway. This was used for ventilation for the cave, and was once again cleverly built so that enemies looking for these early christians could not locate the cave.

After traveling into the deepest part of the cave (that the public were allowed to go), Mustafa brought us to where all the occupants of the cave would sleep, eat etc. It was at this spot that Mustafa told us that around 5000 people used to live here. Now, you may think that perhaps the cave could accommodate 3000-5000 people. If you are thinking that, then take a look at some pictures of the cave and decide whether you'd like to live here for months on end with 5000 other people.

If you want to know a little bit more about this underground city you can have a little gander at the following link that I found and thought was pretty good (I was trying to find the name of the underground city at the time and stumbled upon this website): http://www.goreme.com/kaymakli-underground-city.php

After noticing the exceptional freshness of the air after departing the underground cave city, we drove around before stopping at a town called Çavuçin and had lunch in 'Ottoman's family cafe'. The cafe was really lovely as there was a real authentic turkish feel to it. It was simply just a turkish family business. I liked that. Unfortunately though, it started to rain so we took the opportunity to drive to Urgup and have a relax in a turkish bath at the 'Hamman'. 
I LOVED the Hamman! Picture this, a marble room with a steam room and a sauna. You are relaxing and feel extremely warm. Afterwards, you wash yourself off and get scrubbed by a turkish man (maybe don't picture the hairy turkish man) and you watch as all your dead skin comes off in little balls (perhaps don't picture that either). If feeling the cleanest you have been in your life wasn't enough, then imagine being covered in a mountain of bubbles then getting massaged from head to toe. This was basically my experience in a turkish Hamman. Now that I read back on it, perhaps you shouldn't 'picture it' but imagine the feeling and sensation of being inexplicably clean and fresh. It's good. 
The next day is what you would call 'a lazy day'. After having our buffet breakfast Katherine, Charlie, Tom and Frazer went for a walk to the Love Valley, whereas Gina, Izzy, Katie, Alice and I went to the supermarket, made thick thick chicken soup and played cards. 

Although the morning proved to be a lazy one, we did go for a horse ride in the evening. I found it a great way to view the scenery around Goreme, however, Izzy and Kate unfortunately did not, as their horses erm, 'misbehaved'.

This was my horse. Isn't she just pretty!?
We were further spoilt with yet another amazing view later that evening when we walked up to the top of the fort (near to where we lived). This can not be explained in words. Photos will have to do, but they still do not give true credit to the beauty of that Cappadocian sunset. 

Later that night Alice, Kate and I took a taxi to Goreme to a place called 'Fat boys'. There, we met Ottoman (from Ottoman's cafe), true turkish locals including the horse riding man, some scottish/brittish guys and we played pool, turkish style. Now turkish pool is different and harder than normal pool. When you get to the black ball, you have to 'pocket' it in the opposite hole to which you got the previous ball in to. Alice did it on the first try. Freak. Haha But seriously, she was amazing that night. 

Things seemed somewhat usual as we woke up the next morning and had our amazing buffet breakfast once again. However, the day marked our departure from Cappadocia and Turkey to 'home' in Stratford Upon-Avon, England.