October 2008 Cappadocia Turkey

Following in the blogging footsteps of Fred Moore formerly of Adana, Turkey, we booked a trip to Cappadocia during October. Some people who had been there said two days was enough. We didn't want to leave after 8 days. My idea was to book into the Esbelli Evi hotel in Urgup and then move to a less expensive hotel. This proved impossible because every day we were unable to leave the wonderful Esbelli Evi.

Breakfast was 3 kinds of cheese, yogurt, corn flakes, olives, honey and jams, simit bread, toast, pears, melon, coffee, regular and herb tea, and a choice of 12 individual omelets, served inside or outside on the terrace. The mornings were very chilly though, so we never sat outside. The owner of the Esbelli Evi, Suha, gave us a map of the area around Urgup, and he marked out two itineraries: one for today and one for tomorrow (as people said: two days).

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We did look at a few other hotels, and if I go again and want to stay close to my budget, I would choose the Kilim in Uchisar or the Kelebek or Canyon View in Goreme. All these towns are within a few miles of eachother.

For the first 3 days, we traveled around by dolmus and bus. The advantage is that it's cheap and picturesque. The disadvantage is that they don't run very often. Arranged by the hotel, our car rental from Hertz cost about $50 a day, all inclusive (but a fill-up cost about $75).

We arrived in Cappadocia by flying Turkish Air from Istanbul to Kayseri where a shuttle van (arranged by our hotel) picked us up. It's always difficult for me to make the transition to a new place and I was not happy with what looked like a bleak landscape. The van stopped at a wall with a door in it and beyond that was our hotel, built of stone blocks against the walls of an old cave. We chose a room that was more of a suite, with 2 bedrooms and a bath. 

We walked down the long steep hill towards town and had dinner at Dimrit. The flat bread was huge and hot and the food was good.

The next morning we walked down the long steep hill to find Murat Guzelgoz (at Le Bazaar D'Orient), a carpet-selling friend of our carpet-selling friend in Istanbul, Mustafa Cesur. Mustafa had learned his trade by working with Murat in Cappadocia years ago. Murat and his workers, Mehmet and Ibrahim, welcomed us to a lively scene -- a film was being shot in Murat's basement and a hefty actor was shouting down the stairwell. We arranged to return that evening to have dinner with Murat.

At the otogar where the dolmuses and buses arrive and leave, we caught a bus which left us off about half a mile above the Goreme Open Air Museum. I thought it would be a walled area with ruins inside. It is an area of stone peaks with churches and monasteries carved from the inside of the rock, creating huge caves with altars, graves, a long refectory table, with biblical paintings on the inner walls. The most impressive is the "dark church", with the most elaborate paintings. After a couple of hours of climbing around in the caves, we walked further down the hill into the village of Goreme. We sat outside in a little restaurant that served a good cheap meal and beer, and the owner told us that the dolmus was about to leave for Urgup. He flagged the driver to wait for us, we dropped our money on the table, and hopped into the van.

Back in Urgup, Murat had conjured up a table in his carpet shop and it was set with bread, olives, rolled grape leaves, hummus, and raki. Again I forgot that there is always a second course, and along came sizzling individual casseroles of ground lamb for each of us. I made the mistake of cleaning my plate, and Murat transferred some of his food over to me. When we finished eating, Murat took down his saz, which looks like a mandolin and has 7 strings, and he played and sang some gorgeous love songs. Mehmet played the drum in accompaniment. Rickki said she wanted to see the Ukbeki embroidered cloths, and she said "if you don't show them to me, I'll kill you." Murat said "why kill me? Kiss me".

On Friday morning I saw the hot air balloons above the valley. The ride is expensive, plus I'd be afraid to do it. Rickki had stomach pains and aching muscles. Again we caught the dolmus to Goreme. We wanted to visit a shop that Fred Moore recommends, Tribal Collections, owned by Ruth Lockwood and Faruk Ciftci. Although we told Ruth Lockwood that we felt we could buy carpets only from our friend Mustafa Cesur at the Troy Rug Shop in Istanbul, Ruth gave us a rich seminar on how to evaluate carpets, showing us examples of colors and designs that she says are no longer used.

We caught a bus to Uchisar, the highest elevation in this region. There were two women sitting on the ground chopping open pumpkins and removing the seeds for drying and salting. They pretended to throw the pumpkins at us. We bought a tablecloth with black animals stamped on it. The shop man said these cloths are made only in Tokat.

No bus or dolmus was available back to Urgup, so we took a taxi home. We walked back down the long steep hill to Ziggy's a tiny restaurant. Rickki couldn't eat because of her stomach pains, but I had a very good meal. The owner of the restaurant could see that Rikki didn't feel well, and she drove us back up the hill to the hotel.

The guidebook was not enthusiastic about Avanos, which is noted for its pottery workshops. We liked it enough to visit twice, though. For one thing, it has a river, rare in this region. For another, it is below a plateau that is so rural and beautiful that you do not know what century you are in. Trees, grape orchards, a herd of sheep with shepherd, gentle mountains. Only a small portion of town is devoted to selling to tourists; the rest is just a town going about its business.  We bought some small pieces of pottery. In one pottery showroom, we got our first look at the caves that were carved below ground, going down lower with each chamber. Here they used each chamber to display the pottery. We asked a man where to catch the bus back to Urgup, and he said "you have 7 minutes" so we trotted to the street corner where a bunch of men were waiting for the bus.  We choose Somine to eat dinner at. The waiters don't have enough to do, and they hovered over us and bump into each other. They serve the best vegetarian dish I've had in this area, though.

The next day Rikki's stomach was better but her body still ached. We walked down the long steep hill into town and waited at the outdoor bus/dolmus station for a bus to Goreme. There we walked up the 'love valley' -- I think it's called this because the stone columns look like phalluses. We could hardly believe the colors of the stone mountains against the sky -- yellows, pinks, greens. There were lots of grapes left over on the vines and I ate both juicy grapes and dried grapes. Also almonds off a tree. On our way back to the road we came upon a donkey, just standing around on the path. Rikki called him a 'greeter donkey'. He had a bead necklace.

Sunday we rented the car, which was delivered to our hotel. Rikki did the driving and we headed south to the next town, Mustafapasa. They are building a new hotel to incorporate the caves that are right in town. We ran after a man who was following his donkey. The collection of sticks is a big thing here, and everyone has sticks piled up on the walls of their courtyards. We began to notice that buildings in all the towns have grapevines that grow from a hole in the sidewalk up the whole height of the building to cover a trellis on the roof or balcony. The houses built by the Greeks and abandoned during the Greek/Turkish switch in the '20's are beautifully carved and still have blue doors.

We drove further south and stopped in Cemil. This is not at all touristic, and we were quite interesting to a couple of boys who gestured to us to follow them. They took us to a church from the 1800's, empty but not very damaged, and then they gave us huge handfulls of salted pumpkin seeds. I knew that Rikki was thinking the same thing I was...do we want to eat these from the grubby hands of these boys? Yes! Wandering further south, we saw a little sign that said 'Sinasos Roman excavation'. No one was in the parking lot. As we got out of the car, a one-armed man came toward us and he invited us to walk along the wall that looks down onto the excavated floor of a Roman site. The mosaics are glowing and practically undamaged. He had a small chunk of mosaic that he showed us, so that we could see the tiny colored stones, and Rikki put in under her jacket. The man wasn't nervous, though, and soon she gave it back to him. There is a hamam floor where you can see the cubbies where people put their clothes, and there's a small mosaic at the entrance of the hamam showing two shoes, as if a reminder to take them off. Our man had a little trailer and a table, and he gave us apples. At the end of this impromtu and free tour, I gave him 10 lira which is about $6 and he smiled very sweetly.

Our map, highlighted by Suha, took us to the Soganli valley. We had to pay a little fee to drive into this site, and to our left was a row of women selling little dolls they had made. They asked us our names, and each woman introduced herself. They held out the dolls, which were basically all the same, and yelled at us to buy them. We had two problems: we thought the dolls were ugly, and we were afraid to buy from just one woman because they were all so ferocious. We walked up into the valley... all these places are so gorgeous that it's just one fantastic walk after another.

We drove even further south to Derinkuyu where one of the largest excavated underground cities is. As you park your car, it's not at all apparent where the entrance to the city is. I'm pretty claustraphobic, but before we left Istanbul, our friend Murat Bilir said that I would be able to descend into the caves because he believes I am very strong. We went down into the first chamber and I wasn't feeling happy about the prospect of losing our way. A guide came up behind us and offered to show us the city. We said yes. This turned out to be wise because the passageways that go down to each chamber are so tiny that you wouldn't be able to pass anyone coming up. The guides were able to communicate to each other to keep their tourists down or up so only one group would be in the passageway. Besides telling myself that I was strong, I made sure that I stuck my head into the airshaft that goes to the very bottom of the city, bringing cool fresh air from outside. At the bottom of the series of rooms, you can look up 8 storeys and see the sky. This descent was a great victory for me, and I am so thankful that we did it.

Back in Goreme we tried another restaurant, called Local Restaurant. In all the restaurants now there are very few guests, so the waiters tend to bother us more than we like. Outside there is a huge German shepherd looking in. The waiter tells us that at the end of the evening they give him the bones.

Monday we were out at dawn and we drove back to Avanos. We drove for a long time up on the plateau, along irrigation channels and among the trees and grapevines. I'm sure very few visitors see this part of Avanos.

Both of us had lost our hats, so we went into a small shop in Urgup that had all sorts of stuff for tourists. On the floor were about 10 old dolls -- these were obviously the ancestors of the dolls that we saw in Soganli. Each of these dolls had a different outfit and a different expression. We bought six of them. They cost the same as the ugly glitzy dolls in Soganli, about $3 each.

We drove out the highway and parked at the trailhead to the Rose Valley. Suha had given us directions to find a cave called the 'white church' -- he said "don't miss it". The directions were in the form of photographs showing landmarks to look for to find this church. After several mistakes, we crossed a streambed and climbed into the small opening that opens into the church. This is one of the most spectacular of the cave churches we've seen, with large chambers supported by columns carved from the stone. We ate our sandwiches and pears as we sat outside, looking up at the little dove cotes carved into the outer wall of the church.

We tried to find hot springs in Bayramhacilar, but we failed. We stopped to ask a woman for directions and she hopped into the back seat with her bags of vegetables. We drove a short way and she called up to another woman who was looking out her second floor window. She came down, a boy joined her, and on the other side of the car a man came to help. They were all shouting into the car and pointing into the distance. The man and the boy drew identical maps which we couldn't follow.

Back in Urgup we went into a shop that had old stuff and I bought two silver bracelets. The owner invited us to come back in the evening and said he would serenade us. We went back around 6 and he was eating his dinner with a friend. We had brought a bottle of raki and he filled up a glass for each of us with raki and water and he took down his saz. He is a wonderful musician. I thought his friend was bored by having to sit through the visit from the tourists, but after the first song, he sang along as well. It turned out that our host, Aziz, is the brother of Murat in the carpet shop. When he told us this we realized that they had the same laugh. Aziz waved at his walls and we noticed that half of his stuff was no longer there. He told us that he had to move his shop to a less expensive rental, and we walked over to his new shop, each carrying an armfull of his stuff. He was complaining that the tour buses take their clients only to certain places and he is not on the circuit. We went back to Dimrit for dinner because I liked their bread so much.

Next day we were out at dawn again and back to Mustafapasa. We walked up to the highlands above town. I wanted to cross a field to see a cave but the grass was wet and I didn't want wet shoes. Then we headed to the Ihlara Valley because I had seen a photo of a river there. We got pretty lost, but finally we found the valley. When we got out of the car, it was cold enough to zip up our coats and put on our gloves, but down in the valley we warmed up on the slightly strenuous path along the river. Each cave church is marked with a sign pointing up a long staircase. More wonderful churches, including the 'snake church'. There are over 300 steps back up to the parking lot, and it was fun to huff and puff with the other visitors.

We got back after dark. Since we had to return the car the next day, we stopped at a gas station. There were no streetlights or other buildings around, just the gas station in the middle of nowhere. I handed the guy my credit card and he said I had to come into the station to process it. There were 6 men in there, smoking and chatting. My card was rejected. We tried another credit card and that was rejected too. Luckily I had enough cash with me (the gas cost about $75) to pay. I found out later that both my credit card companies had decided on the same day that my cards were 'compromised' but they wouldn't say more. I was really upset when I spoke with them since I had been in such a vulnerable position at the gas station. The manager of Esbelli Evi, Ramazan (whose wife cooks the omelets) heard me ranting and calmly said "you should have called me. I would have come and paid." He said I didn't have to worry about paying the hotel bill either; I could figure it out when I returned home.

We went to say goodbye to the men in Murat's shop (Murat had gone off to Syria) and then goodbye to Aziz and his wife Selma who was helping him set up his new shop. Their 11-year-old golden retriever was lying outside. We had dinner at the Cappadocia Cafe, which we didn't much like. The two guys working there were smoking and sitting at one of the tables.

Now that we had been here for seven days, we had covered almost all of Suha's 2-day itinerary.

Wednesday began an adventure that we were pretty nervous about. Mustafa (our friend in Istanbul) had arranged for his wife's brother and brother-in-law to drive about 2 hours to pick us up at the Esbelli Evi and drive us 2 hours back to their town. Mustafa wanted us to see the town that his wife came from (he comes from another small town nearby). He is very nostalgic about this area and he feels he can never take a day off from working in his shop. To add to our nervousness, Mustafa didn't know the name of the brother-in-law and neither of these men spoke any English. While I was looking at Suha's house he is contructing across the road from the hotel, the two men drove up and introduced themselves as Recep and Nayim. They were polite and we got into the back of their car, a very decent car. At first I thought the day would never end, but the men were nice and pretty much ignored us. In Develi they stopped and took us to a restaurant where we were served the famous Develi pita with lamb and herbs, ayran, and salad. We were looking down upon the town from the second-floor family room and there were vegetables and fruits for sale everywhere. Recep and Nayim are farmers -- that's why they had the time to drive us around in October. Rikki didn't eat the salad because she was protecting her stomach. We drove another 15 minutes or so and came to a little sign that faced only one way, saying 'Cucun'. This is the Cucun that Mustafa has been telling us about for years. It is so tiny that there is only a small school and no mosque. No stores that we could see, although we heard later that our host family has a little shop under their house.

As we came to the door, out came Mustafa's wife's (Hamide) mother who grabbed us and kissed us; I think we were a reminder of her daughter who lives so far away. We took off our shoes and sit on a long couch inside, and one by one the relatives came in. The children were fascinated by us. Hamide's brother Recep, offered to take us for a ride in their apple orchard on their new blue tractor. Back at the house, we visited the cows on the ground floor and fed the chickens. In their storage area were many huge bags of salted pumpkin seeds.

Although we had eaten lunch about an hour earlier, Hamide's mother and the other women set out a meal of ground beef, yogurt, bread, honey, cheese, olives, and bread, all produced by them. We could hardly eat, but we forced ourselves. With the tea, they served a bowl of granulated sugar. Neither of us wanted sugar with our tea, but they interpreted this to mean that we wanted sugar cubes instead, so they brought out a big bowl of sugar cubes. It's difficult for us to sit on the floor while we eat, and they were amused by this. When we left, they gave us two bags of pumpkins seeds and a huge round of bread.

Recep and Nayim drove us to Kayseri where we would  get a plane the next day. They chose a route that goes along the base of Mt. Erciyes, which is about 12,000 feet high and covered with a glacier. There was snow in the air. Rikki said the landscape looks like Idaho with Mt. Fuji. We stopped at a fountain and the men insisted that we drink the water that was pouring from the mountain. I had just about room to swallow one sip. We descended a long hill into Kayseri, the first city we've seen in a week. They stopped in front of Hotel Almer where we had a reservation, and said goodbye.

The Almer costs the same as the Esbelli Evi, but it is just a regular business traveller hotel.  We headed for the Hilton for dinner so we could order beer.  Our waiter not only told us his name, but he asked us our names and then used our names each time he spoke to us. Rikki had been doing an informal survey of manti, a dish of small meat-filled pasta with a tomato and yogurt sauce. This night was the celebration of Turkish national day and below us in the plaza they set off fireworks which burst above us. There were huge Turkish flags hanging from the buildings, and the edge of one was covering a bit of the window in our hotel room.

In Kayseri the shops are not at all touristic, and often the shopkeeper was actually working on his wares, like sharpening knives. We saw a couple who was shopping for an ax and they posed for a photo. Rikki bought a pair of scissors and I bought a wool cap (the owner modeled caps for me).

Kayseri is famous for pastirma, a highly-seasoned air-dried cured beef. I was in a vegetarian phase so we did not have any.

We took a taxi to airport and plane to Istanbul. We went right to Mustafa's shop so we could tell about our adventure. This was the only night we could go to our favorite restaurant, Zengifil in Taksim. It's vegetarian only, and they have a wide choice of non-meat dishes.

The next morning I woke up with the stomach cramps and aching muscles. Now it was my turn to drag around. At one of the banks that has an art gallery we visited (for the second time) show of paintings by Fausto Zonaro, an Italian artist who moved to Istanbul in the 20's and became the court painter. We admired his nerve: the sultan offered him a building to live and paint in, but the sultan wanted Zonaro to pay rent. Zonaro refused, saying that he was an artist and could go anywhere he wanted (he was penniless), and the sultan gave in.

We visited our friend Murat Bilir, who has a shop in the covered bazaar, L’Orient Handicrafts, selling Ottoman metal objects. He also has revived a scarf-making craft that was dying out. The men stamp patterns onto the cotton and the women embroider the edges. He sells these scarves in his tiny shop. Murat is a born teacher and we have learned a great deal from him about these Ottoman pieces. We told him that we went into the underground city. I said "what do you think I was thinking about the whole time?" He pointed to his chest. "Yes," I said, "I was thinking 'Murat says I'm strong'."

On Saturday we tried for the second or third time to get to Bebek, a town along the Bosphorus. We lucked out this time because a man saw us looking around at buses and he told us which one goes to Bebek. The ride is along the Bosphorus. There is a long cement wall bordering the Yildiz Park, and on the wall are mounted large black and white photographs of Ataturk in his many photo ops. He is very photogenic and he seemed to go everywhere in Turkey. Bebek reminded us of Saucelito California. We walked back along the water to a town the bus had passed through, Arnavutkoy. It was hard to find a restaurant that served beer, but finally we did. Between our table and the water were three Turkish ladies having lunch. They were dolled up and their jewelry looked as if they bought it at a hotel gift shop. They would eat a portion of the food on their plates, and then they would signal the waiter to bring a fresh plate, push off what they wanted to keep, and dismiss the rest. We were fascinated at their dining technique.

That evening Mustafa's family (Hamide and the three children) came into town and we took them to the Aya Sofya Kebab restaurant. Mustafa had hardly eaten when he got a call from his assistant, Redvan, asking him to come back to the store. It must have been a tricky negotiation for a carpet; Mustafa left us. His daughter Esra said she liked jazz, and she began to sing 'Fever'. Rikki and I joined her. Then the family sang Tarkan's 'kiss' song. When we were leaving, the only other customer in the room kindly said "keep your day job".

Sunday: We picked out a carpet for our sister B.L.D. She'd given us guidelines for color and size, but it was very hard to make a choice. We took the tram out to an area called Horhor where there are lots of meat shops and cheese and honey shops. We came down the hill into Eminonu and walked through the outdoor bazaar, looking at the housewares, stoves, furniture, etc. 

Monday we flew back to New York and Tuesday Obama became President.