It was going to be a long trip to get to Cappadocia from Safranbolu. We had to go through Ankara first which took 3 hours by bus and then from there 6 other hours to get to Goreme in Cappadocia. We arrived in the evening and since we hadn’t booked anything yet, we just walked with our new friends Morgan & Veronica from China to see if their hotel still had rooms left. Fortunately we got to become neighbours and went out for dinner together. It was really nice getting to know new people, talk about their lives and how life is in China in comparison with other countries. They didn’t seem very positive because of multiple reasons like performance pressure in the society, long working hours, strict regulations in the country, censorship, etc. It was pretty sad actually.
The next days was all about exploring the beautiful valleys of Cappadocia, but first we wanted to visit the Open Air Museum with the many churchcaves. However when we walked around there, it wasn’t that exciting. First of all, the entrance was quite expensive having to pay 20 lira per person, secondly the area wasn’t that enormous and the caves not really impressive. The only beautiful churchcave worth the visit apparently costed even extra money (which we didn’t pay). At last it was too crowded and way too touristic, making it difficult for us to enjoy the walk. So we decided to leave the museum and do the Red Rose Trial which is a famous hiking route and officially takes 1 hour. It took us 3 hours though and yet we didn’t get to see it all. The thing is, you can totally lose yourself while walking through the mesmerising valleys and the amazing views. There are these caves with secret passthroughs you may discover or you may want to take other routes, getting off of the Red Rose Trial. We climbed many hills, found ourself a nice cozy cave and just sat together, staring at the power of nature in front of us. It was simply wonderful. There are possibilities of hiring ATVs, (mountain)bikes or horses to discover the valleys with. We thought of going up with a hot air balloon; yes it is typical, almost every tourist does it but hey what the heck. I want to do it once anyway and when you get such views with it, then why not. Unfortunately the weather was not good enough in the days we were there. We didn’t see any of them raising up in the sky either so we had to forget about it. It was around 15-18 degrees during the day and around 5-8 degrees in the nights (for me personally way too cold, since I don’t function normally anymore when it’s colder than 20 degrees outside).
Recommendation? Une grande oui! Cappadocia is in our top 3 (together with Bursa and Safranbolu) of our destinations visited in Turkey. Its amazing nature scenery, actually almost comparable with the Grand Canyon of the US (if we compare it with the pictures, since we haven’t been there ourselves). But apart of these places, I don’t think there are other places like these in the rest of the world. Considering tourism, we did see a lot of asians in Cappadocia…only asians actually. We didn’t mind, since we find them one of the coolest human beings on earth.
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