This is the Planning! and this is the route

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Cappadocia

Tuesday, 21 September

We get up early and go to the Otogar by metro (which is pretty crowded during rush-hour) and by 2.30 in the afternoon we already arrive at our Hotel (Köse pension) www.kosepension.com in Göreme to find out that our confirmed room has been given to somebody else! I am tired and I want a shower so I am a bit short with words. This is unacceptable I say, but the poor guy at the reception says he does not know computers and the owner is away to visit her sick father in the UK. I have no ears for that and continue to voice my dissatisfaction until I hear the guy say he will provide me with a double room for free for tonight and from tomorrow we will have our room with attached bathroom. I still play a bit the unhappy hotel guest, but he assures he will move our luggage himself and we can enjoy Göreme without a problem. A free night is not a bad thing so we agree.

Somehow Gôreme seems to be able to maintain the village life amist a sea of tourist

After a shower we walk into the village and stop at a travel agency to book the Ilhara valley tour for tomorrow as we do not trust the Kôse pension yet (Think Fawlty towers). The guy at the travel bureau knows the hotel and assures us we can safely book the trip from there. He says he doesn’t want his boss to safe the 5 euro commission he has to pay to the hotel. He also gives us the gossip about the hotel and we realize Gôreme is a small town where everybody knows everybody.

Sunset point - Gôreme

It is late afternoon and the guy advises us to walk to Sunset Point, from where there is an excellent panoramic view of the village and the surroundings. Afterwards we walk back to the village where we have a delicious dinner of 8 kinds of mezes which we devour with beer and Raki. Back at the hotel we also have a bottle of Cappadocian wine which we enjoyed so much during our previous stays here in the 1990’.

Wednesday, 22 September

I have trouble getting out of bed, and not even the thought of making some nice photos of the air balloons over the village can make me get up. We have a breakfast at the pension and wait for the 9.20 bus to come and take us on the Ilhara tour. The minivan is too small to get everybody on board and so another minivan is brought in to split the group in two. The other people of the bus are a mix of world travellers and holidaymakers. The English and Ozzies make up the majority of the group, as always in this part of the world. The stretch from Egypt to Turkey is the ideal stopover for the UK to Australia traveller. With the exception of a few Japanese, continental Europeans make up for the rest of the group.

Balloons at sunrise - Gôreme

We have done the tour fifteen years ago, so we are not in for big surprises, but it is still nice to see it again. The tour is pretty lame but we do the stuff mentioned in the brochure. We start with a stop at the panorama view of Göreme, and then we drive to the Derinkuyu underground city and a walk in the Ilhara valley. By two in the afternoon we have lunch near the stream in the valley and then we are put back in the van for more visits, especially at the Onyx factory where we seem to have more time.

By 6.30 we are back in Göreme and we have a shower and a dinner. We look around the village a bit more on how to rent a bike or a car for tomorrow, but then I fear we will not be allowed to rent without a visa card. And the dog ate our card in Ankara….

Thursday, 23 September

It hurts, but I get up at a quarter to seven because I already hear the balloons hovering over the pension. It is already too late to see the sun come up, so I cannot waste any more time and we hurry our way up to the sunset point from where the view of the balloons over the village and surroundings is stunning. There are several dozens of balloons gliding through the air and they make a beautiful photo opportunity with the Cappadocian landscape as a background. By a quarter past nine the show is over and we walk slowly towards the Göreme open air museum.

When we arrive at the open air museum the car park is already full with coaches and indeed inside the museum it is overflowing with tour groups. This makes visiting the small cave churches very difficult and the queues are long to get into them. Once inside I am told that photography is not allowed! Strange, as 15 years ago everybody was happily flashing away at the same paintings. Or are they not the same old paintings? They seem very new to me and some of the paintings I cannot remember seeing them last time, so I guess some of the medieval paintings did not even exist 15 years ago….

Balloons are big business in Göreme

We spend the afternoon around the pool of the pension and relax with a beer, having some sort of holiday feeling. A late afternoon siesta and by nine they come to pick us up for a Turkish night with dance, food and drinks all included. The music is okay, but it is too late in the evening for me to eat.

Konya

Friday, 24 September

Hangover day! I guess the wine of yesterday was of poor quality and I have a terrible headache. I have not felt this bad in ages and so I walk in agony to the bus station to get the 10.30 bus to Konya.

A father and his daughter

We arrive in the afternoon in Konya and stay in the Ulusan Hotel, a nice hotel in the city center perfectly run by the friendly owner Ali. We walk around a bit and admire the blue dome of the Mevlana museum. Around one of the mosques we see a man dressed in old fashioned dervish clothes. I walk to him asking to take a picture and to my surprise the guy has been living in Melbourne for the last 35 years! In the evening we go to the free music festival that has started yesterday and listen to sound of Formosa.

Saturday, 25 September

Our last day! Recovering from the hangover has made me tired and I actually will be glad to go back home tomorrow. But first we need to visit the Mevlana museum of course. It is very crowded and although the former lodge of the whirling dervishes is now officially a museum most of the Turks come here to pray to Rumi. The entrance fee is only 1 euro, where the standard fee in other musea is 7.5 euro.

After lunch we visit the archeological museum which houses a nice sarcophagus with the labors of Hercules. Also some nice pieces from çatal huyuk are on display. And as we have no time to visit the place this is the closed to the exhibits as we can get.

Hercules doing his thing

Our last evening we end in splendor at the cultural centre. Now what can be more exciting for Soefisinjoor than a night with the whirling dervishes? And indeed we are so lucky to see them perform the Sema, in their hometown. A perfect way to say goodbye and thus end our trip on the tones I love so much. Welcome, welcome, however you are…..