Day 25: Tour 2 and The Hotel’s True Colors

I woke up early in the morning (of course, I can’t miss the call to prayer) and heard the unmistakable sound of balloons rising into the air. I almost put a pillow over my head, but instead I crept out of our cave hotel in my pajamas to get a look. It was breathtaking! So many colorful balloon floating in the sky with the beautiful landscape and sunrise in the background. I ran back to our room and pulled Paul out of our cave to get a look too. I think he was happy I woke him up…It was almost a more impressive view than the one we had from the balloon the day before.

After a little post-balloon-watching nap, we headed out for another day-long tour of the Cappadocia region. We stopped at a pretty lookout point over Goreme before boarding the bus for our hour long drive to the Ihlara Valley. The bus dropped us at the edge of the Ihlara canyon and we hiked for 7 km down into canyon and through the Ihlara valley. It was a gorgeous hike! We walked along a shady path, next to a pretty creek on our right. The view to our left switched between hills with colorful bursts of flowers and sheer cliffs. Along the hike we visited two cave churches. The frescoes were not quite as well preserved as those at the Goreme Open Air Museum, but the churches were impressive nonetheless. And it was interesting to see the evil eye painted in one of the cave frescoes. The evil eye is EVERYWHERE in Turkey.
Lookout point over Goreme.
Ihlara canyon.
Paul on our hiking path.
Paul next to the pretty creek.
More Paul hiking.

Me in front of the tall canyon wall.



Frescoe depicting the ascension of Jesus.
Evil eyes!

After our hike in the Ihlara valley, we stopped at a monastery built into the top of a massive mountain. It was fun (and a good workout!) to climb up the mountain to the monastery – it was so steep and we had to jump from one sloping section to another and scramble up stone stairs all the way to the top. The rooms and paths carved into the rocks were amazing, and we had beautiful views of the town below.
Us with the monastery in the background. We climbed almost to the top!
Us on the way up the mountain with the view of the town below.
View.
Me climbing.
Paul exploring.
Paul in one of the monastery rooms.
One of the monastery rooms. Everything was carved into the rocks by hand!

Our final stop was an old Greek village, where we visited a small underground town and an old church. The underground town was less extensive than the underground city we had visited on “Tour 1,” but it was awesome. We had to climb down a hole in the ground to get into the underground town. I felt like Alice in Wonderland! And we saw a toilet built into the rocks in one of the little rooms, which we learned was an unusual find in an underground city (usually toilets were clay pots…).
The Greek village.
Down the rabbit hole!
Paul on his way out of the underground town.

And then our actual final stop was a Jewelry shop! I thought we were in trouble at first, but luckily we weren’t offered tea, so we didn’t buy anything.

When we got back from the tour we decided to hike up to a lookout point in Goreme and watch the sunset. It was beautiful.
View from the lookout point, just before sunset.


After watching the sunset and grabbing dinner, we decided to take care of our hotel bill that evening before check out the next day…and it was not easy. The balloon ride was on our bill. Paul explained that the company had offered us a refund and convinced us to take a complimentary flight, and the hotel staff responded that the balloon company would “NEVER” offer a refund and that we had to pay for our flight scheduled for the next morning. We were not particularly excited by the idea of another balloon ride, so we told the hotel staff to just take our names off the list for the flight the next morning and remove the charge from our bill. And then all hell broke loose. The owner/manager of the hotel was called, and both the owner and the hotel staff member spent the next hour shouting over us and laughing at us as we tried to explain the situation. The owner called the balloon company in an attempt to disprove that the office manager had offered us a refund and a complimentary flight, and yet he refused to let us speak to anyone from the company. And despite claims that there was a 12-person waiting list for the balloon flight tomorrow, the owner refused to contact any of the people on the waiting list and offer our spots. It was beyond frustrating.

And the “balloon incident” was the last straw that completely turned me against the awful cave hotel. Earlier in the week Paul and I had given the hotel our laundry (and we had a lot from the first part of our trip). Several of my white shirts were returned covered in blue and yellow ink. I thought the shirts were completely ruined, but the hotel was miraculously able to fix my tie-dyed shirts so that they were white again. However, when the shirts were returned, the hotel staff implied that I had colored on my own shirts with marker and attempted to trick the hotel into cleaning the shirts for me. Insane.

I could go on and on talking about other minor issues we had with our hotel that week. Well, now we know NEVER to stay at this particular cave hotel again.