Visiting Kas

After Cappadocia, we took our Canadian friends to Kas for a couple of days. If you follow my blog, this should not come as I surprise as I've gone on and on about Kas' fabulousness in the past. (Our trip last summer starts here.)

Kas is a rare jewel on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, and I cannot say enough good things about it. There isn't a direct connection by road or air, so if you want to get there, you have to drive a few hours from either Antalya to the east or the town of Fethiye or the Dalaman airport to the west, which has kept Kas delightfully quiet and laid-back. At the same time, it's also a great base for exploring the area -- there are a number of restaurants and hotels in town, and it's close enough to popular places like the St. Nicholas Church in Demre, Saklikent Gorge, Patara beach, the Kekova sunken city ruins where you can go kayaking, and the above-water ruins at Xanthos, Letoon, Myra, Patara and Tlos. In Kas, you can also go scuba diving, hang gliding and take a day-trip to a Greek island. [I suppose I should also point out that Kas is actually Kaş -- I usually can't be bothered to add the Turkish accents on my American keyboard -- and pronounced Kah-shh.] 

Anyway, so on this trip, we spent three lovely nights in Kas. Since we'd been multiple times before, we let our friends decide what we would do, and in the end, they didn't want to do anything but just enjoy the ambiance (and the gloriously warm weather, a marked change from both Cappadocia and Canada). Which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do in such a lovely town.

Not surprisingly, the locals agree...

Our first full day there was April 23, National Sovereignty and Children's Day in Turkey. Although the holiday actually commemorates the establishment of the Turkish parliament in 1920, it's become about children and most people have the day off from work. So, appropriately, there were little children playing in the square and dancing to music.

We spent a lot of time eating and drinking. The oranges were in abundance and we enjoyed many glasses of freshly squeezed juice. Cagatay and our friends also enjoyed Turkish coffee, and we had some fun playing fortune-teller with the leftover coffee grounds. This is a real thing -- to start, you place the saucer over the finished cup and make a wish, and then you flip the cup/saucer over and let it sit for awhile. Cagatay suggested that they put their wedding rings on top of the flipped cup because it helps the cup cool faster, though one source I found said that it also helps to dispel bad omens.  After awhile, you flip open your coffee cup and begin interpreting the patterns left by the grounds, which have migrated up along the sides and probably onto the saucer. That's all I know about it, but go here for details on how to interpret the grounds patterns. With this cup, we felt like it had something to do with Cappadocia...don't those look like the rock formations at Pasabaglari?

We also spent a lot of time poking around the shops...

...and just wandering around. Seriously, isn't Kas just gorgeous?

In Photos: Hot-Air Balloons in Cappadocia

I've spent two posts discussing our Cappadocia trip (here and here), but the hot-air balloons deserve their own mention and a host of photos. I went on one of the balloons three summers ago and while it was a lot of fun*, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that watching the hot-air balloons might actually be more breathtaking. We had a spectacular view of the balloons going up in the morning from the various outdoor areas of our hotel, the Kelebek Cave Hotel, and our friends could even see them floating across the horizon from their room (Arch room #3). Watching the balloons, even at 6:30am, was just unforgettable and another experience that outshone ordinary sightseeing.

*Shortly after I wrote this post, a balloon hit another balloon during a morning ride in Cappadocia on May 20, causing the lower balloon -- belonging to Anatolian Balloons, the red balloon company that happens to appear a number of times in these photos -- to fall from the air, which resulted in the deaths of three Brazilian tourists and injuries to a number of the other passengers. According to the newspaper, this is the first hot-air balloon accident since 2009, which is a pretty good safety record but no doubt little consolation to the Brazilians' families or the other injured tourists. Not surprisingly, hot-air balloon bookings in Cappadocia are reportedly down 20 percent.

Visiting Cappadocia, Day Two

So, Cappadocia... Our second day and the morning following were a lot more fun, mostly because we went more for experiences rather than sightseeing. As I said in the last post, to me, Cappadocia is a one-hit wonder -- at every site, you're going to see a rock-cut something. And while it is really amazing and interesting that people had the tenacity to carve into these rocks and then live in them, at the end of the day, it's still a lot of rocks.

With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that everyone in our group agreed one of the best parts about the trip was the (free!) organic breakfast tour we went on through the delightful Kelebek Cave Hotel, which housed us for two nights. (The hotel was awesome -- I would probably come back just to stay there again and swim in the pool.) We took an open-air tractor-buggy to the owner's family farm, where we had an amazing Turkish breakfast of olives, tomatoes, menemen, cucumbers, cheese, dried apricots, strawberries, and more. We all really enjoyed this glimpse into Cappadocia's agricultural life, and the food was delicious.

We even got an up-close look at a couple of Kangal dogs, which are these huge Turkish mastiffs. As I recall, someone said this particular dog is only about a year old.

We spent the afternoon sightseeing around the area south of Goreme. We started at the seven-level Derinkuyu underground city, which was built more than 1,000 years ago by the area's Christian inhabitants as a hiding spot for when invaders swept through. Information seems to vary on the interwebs, but according to Lonely Planet, there were more than 130 underground cities in the region, and Derinkuyu had about 10,000 inhabitants.

Derinkuyu had a church, wine vats, a baptism pool, bedrooms and clever rolling stone doors, but there aren't any informational signs, so it's best to either go on a tour or hire a guide at the site. Otherwise, you'll have absolutely no idea what you're supposed to be looking at, and the site will seem like nothing more than -- wait for it -- rocks.

After Derinkuyu, we drove to the town of Sahinefendi and the archaeological excavation site of Sobessos. Although the Cappadocia tours include Sobessos, there's not a lot to the site and at the moment, it's not very well signed. The Internet tells me that it was a fourth-century Roman settlement and that excavations began in 2002, but I can't confirm that either bit is true. When compared to the rest of Turkey's ancient sites, Sobessos is a disappointment, but the drive there and beyond was lovely -- if you go, it's probably best to think of it as a pit-stop on an afternoon's road trip.

After Sobessos, we headed to Urgup for a very late lunch (or, perhaps more correctly, an early dinner). Since we were all starving, we didn't spend any time looking around, but from what I briefly saw, Urgup looked charming and probably deserved a bit more of our time. We spent the rest of our evening in Goreme, another charming town and our base. It was surprisingly quiet considering the amount of big tours we saw, but I fondly remember its mid-summer laid-back atmosphere from three summers ago. There's just something about it, some intangible quality, that I just love.

Of course, Cappadocia is famous for its hot-air balloons tours*, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention them. I went on one of the balloons three summers ago -- it was a lot of fun, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that watching the hot-air balloons might actually be more breathtaking. We had a spectacular view of the balloons going up in the morning from the various outdoor areas of our hotel, and our friends could even see them floating across the horizon from their room (Arch room #3). Watching the balloons, even at 6:30am, was just unforgettable and another experience that outshone ordinary sightseeing, so much so that I'm devoting another post just to photos. (Having said that, you should still totally go on a balloon ride...consider this an extra option.)

*Shortly after I wrote this post, a balloon hit another balloon during a morning ride in Cappadocia on May 20, causing the lower balloon to fall from the air, which resulted in the deaths of three Brazilian tourists and injuries to a number of the other passengers. According to the newspaper, this is the first hot-air balloon accident since 2009, which is a pretty good safety record but no doubt little consolation to the Brazilians' families or the other injured tourists. Not surprisingly, hot-air balloon bookings in Cappadocia are reportedly down 20 percent.

But having said that, I'm ending with the Goreme Open-Air Museum, arguably the region's most popular sightseeing attraction and absolutely its best, even if it does involve, yes, rocks. Even though we had to rush to the airport, we ducked in here for about 45 minutes on our last morning. There are perhaps about 12 churches and chapels that you can pop into at this UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a number of them still feature beautiful and colorful frescoes. We went around 9am this trip, and the museum was unbearably packed -- when I went three years ago, I visited late in the afternoon, and it was nearly empty. Just a little tip from me to you. :)

Visiting Cappadocia, Day One

We had some friends visiting from Canada at the end of April, so we took them on a mini-tour around Turkey, starting with Cappadocia. I went there when I came backpacking in Turkey in 2010, and to be honest, I wasn't all that excited about a return trip -- Cappadocia is beautiful and definitely worth a visit, but it's a one-hit wonder. But no one else had been, so off we went. :)

BASIC INFO: Cappadocia is a region located in the middle of Turkey and to get there, you can either take the bus or fly into the Kayseri or Nevsehir airports. The Nevsehir airport is significantly closer, but it doesn't see a lot of flights; Kayseri is about an hour 15 minutes from Goreme, Cappadocia's main hub, but it seems to offer more options. (However, from both airports, the only option is to fly to and from Istanbul.) We rented a car at the airport since the daily rental price (TL 90) was the same amount the four of us would have paid for the shuttle to take us into Goreme -- everything in Cappadocia is really spread out, so renting a car was actually one of the best choices we made.

In terms of sightseeing, we used the group tour itineraries as our guide. There are three main on-the-ground tours around Cappadocia, organized by location -- one takes in the area around Goreme (a hike in Rose Valley, Pasabag, maybe the open-air museum), one goes to the area directly south of Goreme (a hike in Soganli Valley, Sobessos), and one goes to the area to the southwest (a hike in Ilhara Valley, Selime rock monastery). Most include a visit to one of the underground cities, where villagers used to hide when invaders were passing through. Because of the distances and few roads, it's easiest to plan a day around a small section of the map, rather than drive around in all directions trying to see the highlights.

On our first day in Cappadocia, we stuck to the sights around Goreme. We started in the small town of Cavusin, which was only about a 10-minute drive away. At street level was the modern town, but perched above it in the rocks was the old, abandoned part of town. It was fun to poke around, but there weren't any signs, so you didn't know what you were looking at.

After that, we visited the Zelve Open-Air Museum, which one of the guys at the hotel had recommended to us as a good alternative to the very crowded Goreme Open-Air Museum. But I don't think it's really comparable -- the Goreme Open-Air Museum has a lot of beautiful frescoes while the Zelve Open-Air Museum gives the region's best glimpse, I think, of what it would have been like to actually live in a rock-cut community. There's nothing left but the rocks, but with the few churches, a mosque and the mill stone, it felt the most authentic to me. That might also be because it was fairly recently inhabited -- the last residents moved out in the 1950s.

After, we went to one of my favorite spots of the trip, Pasabaglari. It was just a relatively small area of __________-shaped fairy chimneys (fill in your own word based on the photo below), but I enjoyed walking along the paths.

To be honest, I wasn't all that enthused by what we saw on the first day. It was a lot of rocks. (Clearly I was not meant to be a geologist.) It also rained most of the day -- it even hailed at one point. We did have a lovely dinner at the grill restaurant Dayinin Yeri in Avanos, though.