Day 22: Goreme

Well, the days of cold towels and welcome juices are officially over. We’re staying in a cave in Goreme! Actually, our cave hotel is not bad as far as caves go. The hotel is built into a hill, and a few of Cappadocia’s famous “fairy chimneys” poke up in the middle of the hotel grounds. Our hotel has several different levels and half levels with steps to cave rooms in different little nooks on the hill and in the fairy chimneys.

Fairy chimneys are rock formations that look like closed umbrellas (point side up) or mushrooms with long stems. Until the last 40-50 years, people lived hidden inside the rock formations. When foreigners first saw the unique landscape, they thought it impossible that people lived in the rocks. After seeing smoke rising from the tops of the rocks (the hidden people were inside cooking), the foreigners named the rock formations “fairy chimneys.”
Paul in our cave.
Me at the hotel, looking out at the beautiful Goreme landscape.
A view of our hotel.

We woke up at 5AM for the call to prayer. Our hotel is right next to a mosque, and all mosques have big speakers at the top to broadcast the call to prayer. I felt like the mosque was inside our little cave room! After we actually woke up a few hours later, we spent the morning at our hotel looking out at the beautiful landscape, and walking through the town at the bottom of the hill. The town is quite small and quiet with cute cobble stone and gray brick streets, lined with trees and pretty fountains.

In the afternoon, we visited the Goreme Open Air Museum. We booked a guide through the travel agency located at the hotel, and he took us through the museum, showing us the cave homes where early Christians hid from Roman persecution and the churches that were constructed into the rocks. The churches were gorgeous! The frescoes in the Church of Saint George were particularly stunning. The colors were dark and bold blues, reds, and mustard yellows. The faces of Jesus and the apostles were so detailed. We were not permitted to take pictures of the frescoes, but we were able to take a few of the paintings from the iconoclast period. The iconoclast paintings were interesting – so childlike, especially compared to the gorgeous frescoes.
Crawling through the caves!
More crawling through caves!
Me in a cave home.
Church at the top of a fairy chimney.
Me, looking out from inside the church.
View of one of the cave churches.
Long dining table in one of the caves, with a frescoe of the Last Supper in the background.
Paul sitting at a cave dinner table.
Gorgeous view, looking out from inside the cave.
Us with the pretty landscape in the background.

Our guide was quite a character. We visited the “Dark Church” where he explained the meanings of all of the beautiful frescoes. He pointed out that most of the faces depicted lacked expression, except for Joseph after the birth of Jesus, who looked “confused.”

After we returned from the Open Air Museum, we decided it was time for a little relaxation in a Turkish bath – a hamam. Hamams are not for the shy! There is no modesty. Paul and I were given LITTLE red and white checked towels to cover up for our traditional Turkish peel and soap massage. The towels were so small, let’s just say it’s good I’m not an inch taller or an ounce heavier or I would have been putting on quite a show. We sat in an extremely hot sauna for 10 minutes and then headed out for our peel and soap massages. The room for the peel and soap massage has a large, warm marble slab in the middle and faucets along the outer walls. The room is open to all persons using the hamam. Paul and I were told to lay at the edges of the marble slab and two little Asian girls adjusted our towels so that we had little loin cloths on the bottom and a little strip of fabric on the top for me. First, we were scrubbed. Then we were covered in thick layers of bubbles and massaged. At the end, the bubbles were washed away with water poured over us several times from little silver bowels. It was so relaxing! We’re planning a return trip for the end of the week.

We at dinner in at the hotel restaurant, down a few flights of stairs from our cave room. The restaurant is outside and we had a table next to the oven – a long, narrow structure with a triangle top and open front. The smell was mouthwatering. Paul ordered chicken and I had a chicken kebab, and we ate while enjoying a nice bottle of Cappadocian wine and musicians playing traditional Turkish music. It was all so peaceful until… I thought I had been eating delicious grilled green beans when suddenly my entire mouth, tongue, and throat felt like it was on fire! Paul had a little taste of the “green beans” and confirmed that they were, in fact, hot peppers with a slow-building heat. I ate almost two whole hot peppers! I started glugging water and wine and anything in reach. And then I got the “spice hiccups.” Usually I can stifle hiccups, but not spice hiccups. Between thes hiccupping and the wine chugging, I swear the whole restaurant must have been staring at the insane drunk girl in the corner. So of course I started laughing at myself in embarrassment. And Paul and the waiter joined in too. Finally the fire died down and we enjoyed a nice sweet desert before retiring to our cave for the night.
Chef in front of his oven (the triangle at the left of the picture).

Turkish musicians.