Cappadocia, Turkey
Cappadocia, the place where you can get lost for a week.
From Denezli to Turkey, it’s a 9-10 hour overnight coach journey. If you’re capable of sleeping whilst on the move then this is great. Otherwise you still need to fly to the airport close by, but make sure you organise a pick up from the airport by private transfer otherwise they will charge you an arm and a leg on the taxi fair as it’s roughly 45 minutes from the airport to the town. Although there were a few hostels in Cappadocia, for the tiniest bit extra you can get yourself a hotel. One of the most famous hotels in the area is called The Cave Suite, where you’re able to watch the balloons all rise for sunrise during breakfast up on the terrace (This is probably where you see all the photos of travel bloggers eating their fruit breakfast, sat on some rugs). I actually stayed at a hotel not far from here, with still an incredible view for it’s roflcopters terrace, rooms were big and I even had my own bath (which after trekking all day, it was nice to relax in). The hotel I stayed at was called Doors of Cappadocia and I highly recommend it as the staff their was super helpful with planning our route around, plus rooftop swimming pool.
Price wise, due to the fact that Pamukkale is an up-and-coming tourists destination, it was incredibly cheaper than Cappadocia. Not really eating or drinking at the hotel, it was cheaper to find restaurants in the town and you have much more of a selection. Although the town is not very big, it’s the main meeting point with all the attractions surrounding Goreme. There are other towns about 20 minute drive away, but I found that there was a lot more variation in Goreme, than anywhere else.
What to do whilst in Cappadocia?
I cannot express enough how great it was to be up in the clouds in a hot air balloon, amongst 199 other balloons, as we all watched the sunrise. Yes, the 4am pickup from the hotel wasn’t entirely pleasant but for the view and experience? Totally worth it.
ATV tour during sunset was okay, it was pretty cool as this was one of the first activities done in the first day of getting to Cappadocia. This meant that we could get our surroundings a bit quicker as we were shown around. Only problem was we kept getting in trouble for “going too fast” whatever that means?
Waking up early to watch the sunrise was also a mission, but less of a mission than waking up even earlier to be on the hot air balloon. We got super lucky in terms of when we booked our flight for the Friday they actually went up. The day before and the day after, the wind speed had picked up too much that we weren’t able to shoot the sunrise from the ground, looking up with all these balloons in the air. No matter, we still woke for the crack of dawn and shot as the sun rose on the towers (or as we called them, massive penises).
In the town area, there is a famous rug store. I say store, I don’t actually think they make any money selling the rugs. But instead they make their money by charging visitors 50lira to come in and take photos. Just be nice to the owner and he won’t have a problem you being there, because when we first turned up he was basically in a screaming match with a Chinese group. Couldn’t understand them, but he seemed pretty agitated. 20 minutes after we had paid him 50 lira each, we returned to the main area and showed him some footage we shot and he was intrigued to know our set up, had a brief conversation with him and he offered us Turkish tea, and freshly baked pitta bread. What’s better than that? So if you go to this rug store, just be respectful. Pay the guy and if you create cool content, show him.
