Ankara to Goreme, Cappadocia

After arriving in Ankara on our overnight train (had a blast, by the way), we loaded into our private van which took us to the small town of Goreme in Cappadocia. This interesting landscape was formed by wind and water erosion, much like the Grand Canyon. One main difference is that the local people carved caves into the rock, which left the landscape looking like something out of a Star Wars movie.



When we arrived in Goreme, we checked into our hotel and then went for lunch at a local restaurant, where we tried some local specialties. Very tasty! Then afterwards, we went to a carpet demonstration where we learned all about Turkish, Kurdish, Persian, and various other types of carpet, including different knotting types and design styles. I was very interested in the topic, as I was looking for carpets to lay on the floors of my new house in Louisiana! After looking at just about every carpet they had in the store, I fell in love with several pieces. Here are three of them:








After spending several hours shopping for carpets, I went to the hot air balloon place to get everything ready for tomorrow's early morning hot air balloon ride! Then I came back to the hotel for a little down time before our hike, where we climbed up to a look-out point to enjoy the sunset.








After the sun went down, we headed to dinner where we enjoyed more local cuisine. This evening we tried kabab that had been cooked slowly in clay pots for three hours. The result was a delicious, juicy meal, which we all enjoyed!


After dinner we headed back to the hotel since we have to be up and ready by 5am tomorrow for the hot air balloon ride!

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Location:Goreme, Turkey

Istanbul: Day 3

The following morning, we were up early for a walking tour of Istanbul. We started by walking to another mosque, the Suleymaniye Mosque, which was not as crowded as the Blue Mosque, but was just as impressive.












We then walked to the Grand Bazar, which was extremely crowded and with the narrow alleys and large amount of people, really brought out the claustrophobic in me!



We stopped at another small mosque that had some gorgeous tile work!



We walked through the spice market and then stopped at a local place for a delicious lunch! Afterwards, we had free time, and most of us ended up at the Topkapi Palace. It was an impressive former sultan's palace, and in the treasury (where unfortunately no pictures were allowed) were some of the biggest emeralds I have ever seen as well as an 86 carat diamond. The grounds were gorgeous, and we visited the harem as well that at one point housed over 400 concubines.











While on the ledge of the harem enjoying the view of the city below, I spotted a ship that looked familiar to me across the bay. It was the Corinthian II, the ship on which I traveled along the Western coast of Africa this past February, March and April! I decided to splinter off from the rest of the group to go say hello to some friends who worked on board. Unfortunately I was unable to get to the ship, thanks to strict port controls, but I did run into some familiar crew members on the street and had them pass on messages to friends onboard! What a small world!

I then had dinner, headed back to the hotel to meet the rest of the group for our transfer to the train station. We took a ferry across the bay to the Asian side of Istanbul, where we caught an overnight train to Ankara. The train cars were comfortable, and we all had a great time on the way to Ankara!


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