Day 9 & 10: Kayseri & Cappadocia

          As the trip is coming to an end, sadly, we planned to squeeze the Cappadocia piece if we could. We only had a 1.5 days there and that was enough for us to be honest. First we hung out around Kayseri as wanted see the newly developed city of my parents and grandparents. Kayseri used to be hometown for many Armenians during the Ottoman Empire time. There are still 4 churches that exists and I wanted to visit the Kirkor Lusavoric Church that my cousin and uncle facilitated the reconstruction of it. Visiting the Church, which was the first Church of Anatolia, made me feel home away from home. Knowing that my ancestors called this region their home for many years makes you feel that way I guess. As I was taking pictures of the facade of this beautiful church a gentleman approached and introduced himself. He owned a a home appliance store nearby there and he said that he was really involved in archeology and history of the Kayseri region. After a brief chat our taxi driver initiated that the history buff be our tour guide. He showed us in an hour the entire Armenian quarter in Kayseri around the town of Talas including the American College where there were training of nuns and priests. I wish I had more time to hang out with him to learn more as he knows so much with great amount of details. Later on we got picked up by a shuttle from our hotel to head to Cappadocia. Talking to our young driver on the way, I couldn't have thought that he would be our private tour guide the next day.

Beautiful Kirkor Lusavoric Church in Kayseri

Inside the church

I got my driver and unofficial tour guide with me. Gotta love random things in life.

Talas Armenian Church

The weather hit another history record in Cappadocia at 110 degrees during our stay there, beating the last 60 years season highs. Our hotel in the region is pretty cool as our room was built in a cave. We didnt need AC inside the room. It was quite interesting to spend the night there to be honest- very quiet and felt like living in the past sometime. We walked around the Goreme in the evening to make our plan for the next day. Ellen wanted to experience hamam, Turkish bath, and she liked it. I went around and negotiated the best deal with a tour agency to do the famous hot air balloon ride as well as unusual private tour of the ENTIRE Cappadocia. We had a dinner at a local place that has testi kebab, which is type of kebab that they cook the meat inside the clay pot and your break it before eating it. It was quite delicious and even some street cat couldn't resist but meow asking some from Ellen:) We had a Loooonnnngggg day the next day starting at 4.45 pickup by shuttle to take us to the hot air balloon site. Just to give a brief history of Cappadocia, it's believed that Hittites lived here first 4000 years ago and they have carved these caves and shaped them as their living grounds. Many tribes, empires made these lands home to themselves - Romans, Byzantine, Persian, and Ottoman Empires. Seeing all these above the ground on a balloon was truly an amazing experience. It is a must-do in this capital of hot air balloon. It was so cool to be able to go up and down around this unique land with spectacular landscape of caves, mountains, valleys and fairy chimneys. Seeing 100 other balloons up in the air before the sunrise was something you don't see everyday. There were so many people from all around the world in Cappadocia and we couldnt wait to see this beautiful land a bit closer.

Getting ready to party up in the sky

No words

Hittites lives in these unique rock formation 4000 years ago

After our breakfast we got picked up by our tourism student/tour guide- Peace. He was shy to speak English so I was translating Ellen most of the information that he shared throughout the day. Our first stop was the underground city of Derinkuyu (deep well). This incredible piece of land has 8 stories and was built by the people of Byzantine who were against the kingdom and they wanted to practice their own religion. The lower we went down the the deep well the colder and narrower the paths got. It was hard to crawl at one point. These rebels of ortodox religion created themeselves a secret city with a proper church, school, graveyard, kitchen, prison, military living area and they built it in away that through the narrow tunnels they connected the underground city to other little cities. I am having hard time describing this place as it really captivated both of us. In a span of 4 hours were 1000 meters up in the air and 100 meters down under the ground of Cappadocia. It was magical!

Derinkuyu Underground City - It's hard to crawl through the tunnels

 Rest of the day we saw amazing landscapes such as Pigeon Valley, Love Valley, imagination valley (with some naturally built fairy chimneys ie. upside down elephant, penguin, lady with a gown etc). We also went to the open air museum in Goreme where it had many beautiful little churches and chapels from Byzantine empire time. The artwork of Jesus Christ and the rest of the bible and the christian life was all depicted on the walls of these cave looking churches.

Imagination valley with special fairy chimneys in the background

 We also had a nice relaxing lunch by Kizilirmak (Red River) before we started our unexpected shopping spree of Turkish carpet and porcelain. We got a really nice hand wowen carpet for our place and a nice souvenior from the clay pot place where Ellen and I actually practiced to produce clay pot from scratch. Hers was turned into an amazing ashtray at the end. It was a nice gesture and a cool experience. We finished our very special Cappadocia day filled with excitement at a famous Alexander Kebab place - Elmacioglu. Our friend Peace drovers all the way back to Kayseri to dine at this special place just in time for breaking the fast for Muslim people who were fasting 16 hours straight. The Alexander kebab was to die for and it was the best that I have had so far. The facility fed over 1000 people I thinks the restaurant had ballrooms and such with 3 floors and terrace. Our private tour had to end as we got dropped off to the airport heading back to Istanbul. I still cannot believe how much we squeezed into one day and how many unique places we saw in a day and for an amazingly cheap price. Sponteneous life! We didn't plan any of these and had no clue even about balloon. We just did it up I think here in Cappadocia and Kayseri getting bombarded about history. After 10 days of beaches we needed to balance our trip a bit. Arriving in muggy Istanbul again after midnight we were sadly getting close to our last day of our trip. Some interesting stuff was in store for us on the last day as well!!