Friday, April 27, 2012

Land of the Fairy Chimneys - Cappadocia

Next stop, Cappadocia. This is a region in central Turkey known for it's "out of this world" rock formations.   On the bus it took us about 10 hours to get there. We arrived at 4am.  Unfortunate for us because we didn't have a hotel/hostel booked.  For about 15 minutes in 1 degree Celcius we wandered with a few other travelers through the tiny town of Goreme looking for anywhere that had an open door. The town was completely asleep. We finally found the hostel we wanted to stay in, fittingly Nomad Hostel, but the doors were locked and the lights were out. Next door to that was Roma Hotel. It had a reception lounge that was open... Praise the Lord. The receptionist told us that we could just wait around in the lounge until our hostel next door opened. She even made us some tea. So nice. We waited until sunrise, 7am to see if we could find another hostel that would be open. We looked but nothing we felt comfortable with so we went back and, finally, Nomad had opened it's doors. We checked into the cavernous dorm room and slept for a few hours.  We were wiped out.
Winter conditions with no winter clothes.  Freezing!

Cave converted to hostel.  What else would you do with a cave? Lol!

After waking up we decided to go for a walk to see the town.  We only planned to sleep one night here and leave late the following day so we needed to make the most of it.  Walking around we tried to figure out what else we wanted to do there.  The most popular thing to do is take a hot air balloon ride early in the morning to see the valleys from above. It was too expensive for our cheap budget (refer to our Meteora blog regarding our cheapness). We thought about taking ATV's to the valleys, but we wanted to hold out to see about the weather.  
Very different scenery.
Rose Valley


Fairy Chimneys in Zemi Valley

Look at these formations!

Later that first night we had to make another run to the hospital (see Fethiye Blog).  It was a scary night, but the IV drip brought down the swelling in Mu's throat.  We are so grateful for the owner at Nomad Hostel. He changed his evening plans to drive us to the hospital the next town over, he stayed with us so he could translate, he drove us to the pharmacy to get some meds, and he took us back to the Hostel.  (Nomad Hostel definitely get an A+ for customer service.)  We thank God for taking care of us through him.

The next day, we woke up early and found it.... wait for it.... SNOWING! Awesome!  So glad we didn't book the ATV's.  But then we needed to decide what to do.  Lucky for us there was a tour company that worked with our hostel.  They had the van outside ready to take off and, after counting the cost, we decided to go for it.  If we didn't go it would pretty much be a waste of a day.  The tour group was going to Southern Cappadocia.

More winter weather with absolutely no winter clothes. Did I say freezing?
To start the tour we drove to a cliff (Pigeon Valley) with a scenic view of Goreme and the surrounding valleys. It was still snowing so we just ran out, took pictures and ran back to the bus. The region is called Pigeon Valley because the Christians who moved there reared pigeons and used their droppings as fertilizer in the grapevines. After this we visited an underground city called Derinkuyu. It was built by the Hittites circa 300 BC to protect themselves from the raiding Aegean civilization.  Later when Christians came to the area to escape from the Romans, they took over the city and expanded it.  A total of about 36 underground cities can be visited in Cappadocia.  The underground city in Derinkuyu has 13 levels but only 8 have been restored. We walked down to the 8th level through narrow passages and stairways to a depth of about 60 m. It was still freezing so we were so cold.  The lighting down there was pretty dim so a lot of our pictures didn't turn out so well. 
Going down 8 floors was easy. Coming back up...a different story. Supposedly 720 steps. Get your fitness on V!

Amazing how they built stairs in these underground caves.

Meeting Room

Underground Church with baptismal

After that we went to  Ihlara valley, the largest valley in area, 16 km long. We walked for about 40 minutes and saw the walls of the cliffs lined with cave dwellings. There are many churches carved into caves. We visited one of them which still had frescoe paintings in place after hundreds of years. The churches date back to the 4th century. 


Walking along the stream in Ihlara Valley
We enjoyed some lunch at the end of the walk. After this we went off to another part of Cappadocia called Selime to see a monastery carved out of the rocks. It was an amazing thing to see. A cool bit of trivia is that this area was the inspiration for the cave dwellings you see in the movie Star Wars.  We spent about 30 minutes all over this monastery, climbing up pretty high on the carved walkways.
The Selime Monastery


In the Monastery

Atop the Monastery

At the Monastery

 To wrap up the tour we stopped at a shop selling nuts, dried fruits and other Turkish delights and then one more panoramic view of the valleys.
Beautiful colors (yep, those are dwellings)

Last Panoramic View of the Pigeon Valley
Wow, what a day. Then 45 minutes after we got back we took off for the bus station to return to Istanbul... 12  more hours of fun :)  Stay tuned for Germany.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Fish bone mayhem - Fethiye


After a 5-6 hour bus ride we arrived in Fethiye. This is a southern town on the coast of Turkey.  We decided to spend two nights here because we wanted to have some time to relax after Istanbul and Selcuk's go, go, go.  We arrived late and walked into our hotel, Pinara Pansion, without a reservation, and thankfully got a room. Then we switched to another room because the heater wasn't working (it got down to freezing in the evening).
After a good night of rest we woke up to the typical Turkish breakfast: bread, cheese, boiled eggs, cucumbers, tomatoes, and flavored tea. We took a walk along the marina across the street and then headed along the waterfront into town.  Having heard that one of the things to do in Fethiye is to go to the Fish Market we headed straight there.  Here you can go to the fish vendors, pick out your fish, then have it cooked at the restaurant of your choice for 6 Turkish Lira/per person. It was a cool concept. There was such a great selection: salmon, grouper, trout, mackrel, sea bass, shrimp, crawfish, mussels, etc. We decided on a smaller sea bass for about 10 Lira. 

The restaurant started us off with bread, salad, and cheese while they cooked the fish. Then out came the fish. It looked so delicious we forgot to take a pic. As we started to dig in Muthoni reminded me to watch out for bones. Then, no more than 10 seconds after she said this, drama!  I see Muthoni jump up from her seat shouting, "Vernon! Hit me!" as she frantically tries to cough out a fish bone.  Oh no! Remembering my first aid training from high school I told her "Keep Coughing, keep coughing." Still, no dice. She ran to the bathroom to try coughing it out more. She even tried inducing vomit to get it out (DO NOT EVER DO THIS!) but still no help.  She was hurting so much. The waiter handed her a huge piece of bread and said, "You have to swallow this whole." She did, and then she said "Now the pain is on the other side!" She drank a few bottles of water, which was no help at all. She couldn’t eat any more and was in a lot of pain. After 20 minutes we decided that we needed to see a doctor.  

We left the fish market and walked there (wasn't too far). When we arrived, the doctor put a scope in her throat.  I was there so I could see the screen he was looking at.  The bone was nowhere in sight.  "It must have gone down", the doctor said.  They said the pain may have been from the bone scratching on the way down.  So they prescribed a medicine to gargle and a pain killer. She was still in a lot of pain, but we hoped the pain killers would help. (They didn't. At our next stop in Cappadocia Mu took one of the pills but it got stuck in her throat, now much more swollen. We had to go to the hospital there where the doctor gave her an IV drip. The swelling went down. They gave some good medical advice of eating only cold things to prevent further swelling.) So there may have been nicer things to see in Fethiye, but we needed Mu to get some rest.  We took a few pics though.  Look and see.


Fethiye pier

It was beautiful.
It was so windy here on the water's edge.
Yep, snow capped mountains.

This is the hospital we went to in Fethiye.
In Cappadocia. We were quite worried, but praise God she is just fine now.

The Ancient city of Ephesus

Our first trip to the Asian side of Turkey (Anatolia) was a city called Selcuk (pronounced "sell choock"). This is the city you stay in if you want to visit the ancient city of Ephesus.  To get there we took one of Turkey's many overnight buses (If you want to travel in Turkey, the bus system is very efficient, and comfortable. They serve drinks and snacks throughout the trip.)  The ride was about 9 hours.  After one bus transfer we arrived in Selcuk and found our hostel, Urkmez Hotel. We grabbed breakfast and then checked into our room and napped for about 3 hours.

Since we only had one night in Selcuk we got up and started looking around the city.  It was pretty small, about 36,000 people. You could see the whole downtown area fairly quickly.  We walked up to the ruins of St John's Basilica, or the remains of it and after seeing the admission fee, we decided it wasn’t worth it.  After avoiding the purchase of a so-called ancient coin we walked further into town. We found the Ephesus museum, which was closing within 30 minutes. Again, we decided it wasn't worth touring, though we did spend some time in their gift shop. After that we took a walk over to the Temple of Artemis.  If you take a look at the Bible in the book of Acts, chapter 19 you'll see how the people of ancient Ephesus worshiped Artemis. Artemis is the Greek god of animals, hunting, new born babies and expectant mothers.  There wasn't much left of the temple.  The area has been ravaged by earthquakes over the years so the temple was destroyed. There was only one column left standing when we were there and another part of the temple was under water. After checking out the temple we went back to the city center to find some dinner.


These are the remains of St. John's Basilica in Selcuk.

Here is what's left of the Temple of Artemis on the edge of Selcuk.

The next day we took the 3km walk to the ruins of Ancient Ephesus. Thankfully it was a sunny day so it was a nice walk. When we finally arrived in Ephesus we found a dozen bus loads of tourists.  We checked out the ancient city for about 4 hours. The city dates back to 6000 bc. It's been hit by earthquakes many times and rebuilt many times.  We saw the ancient theater, the one talked about in Acts where the Christians were dragged to face the Ephesians shouting for two hours "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" We saw the agora (market place), library, temples, public toilets,and  terrace houses. It was really cool to be in another place that I have read about in the Bible. To think that Paul, Timothy, Apollos, Aquila and Priscilla were here along with the other disciples. Then, at the same time, to think about what Jesus said about the church in Ephesus in Revalation 2.


The Great Theater in Ephesus (still under re-construction)
Ephesus library
Another shot of the Library

Headless Statue in Ephesus

The Ancient Market (Agora) in Ephesus
This is a smaller theater at the other end of Ephesus.

Here is the 3k walk back from Ephesus to Selcuk.


Sunday, April 15, 2012

Istanbul

We  made it to Turkey! No problems at the airport, we paid $20/15 Euros for our visas and onward we went to Istanbul. We took the train from the airport and walked quite a bit before reaching our hostel. (We are definitely planning to drop some weight from our bags because that walk was miserable.)  The first day we wanted to recover from traveling so we had dinner and chilled.

From then on we tried to hit every major spot.  We visited the Spice Market, a busy bazaar with lots of vendors selling all kinds of teas (even love tea), spices, turkish delights, and dried fruits.  We also visited Topkapi Palace which was the Sultans house in the 1600s, the Blue Mosque, the Basilica Cistern, Hagia Sophia which was a church turned to a mosque and is now a museum and hung out in the park. On our last day before we went to the airport, we visited the Grand Bazaar, a humongous indoor street market, with vendors selling clothes, leather items, jewelry, spices, Turkish delights, souvenirs and many other things.

Istanbul is a city filled with life and lots of energy.  It’s a great place to go on vacation.  People are out all day long, the streets are clean, flowers are in bloom everywhere, and the people are generally very friendly (at least in the tourist district of Sultanhamet).  We felt so safe everywhere we went, regardless to the time of day. I'd definitely recommend visiting this city.  

Oh, there was something we realized that we really didn’t expect while we were in Istanbul.  Muthoni is a Superstar! I had no idea.  Everywhere we went people stared at her. They asked to take pictures of her and with her.  Teenage girls gasped with excitement when we walked by – really!. It was crazy… Well, it was interesting at the beginning but then after a few days Muthoni had finally had it. When she’d see someone stare, she’d stare right back. And finally one girl, a Canadian, was staring and Muthoni asked, “What’s the Problem?!” and the girl answered, “Your hair. It’s so beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it before.” It was her braided hair! Really? No Sista’s with braids ever been here before?  Wow, we didn’t expect that.  Muthoni, having had a scarf handy, covered her hair and all of a sudden, nothing. No looks, no photo ops, no paparazzi, no random strangers coming up to ask if Muthoni is a singer, or store owners calling out “Naomi Campbell”.   What a relief, we could enjoy the rest of our day in peace.
Anyhow, check out our pics below.

Public Transit in Istanbul gets an A+.
Streets of Istanbul

Fruit stands in the city sell fresh orange and pomegranate juice.

The Spice Market

There are so many spices, teas, and Turkish Delights to choose from.

Here's one of Istanbul's many mosques.

Washing station for your feet before entering

Ornate ceiling in Topkapi Palace
Entrance to Topkapi Palace

Ottoman Decoration in Topkapi Palace

Samba performers in Istanbul

The Basilica Cistern
Cistern, in sepia

Enjoying some sunshine in Sultanhamet with the Superstar!

The Blue Mosque

The ceiling inside the Blue Mosque

Blue Mosque at night, in Sepia

They serve some really good handmade ice cream... mmm mmmm

View from the hostel's roof top terrace

The Street our hostel was on were bustling til midnight.


Some camera trickery :)
The Asian side of Istanbul (we were on the European side)

Hagia Sophia

Inside Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia by day

The Grand Bazaar

Mu fell in love with these lamps

We stayed in Istanbul for 2 nights then took a V&M tour (easy and cheaper than booking one) of Anatolia, which is the area of Turkey on the Asian Continent. In Anatolia we visited Selcuk, Fethiye and Goreme (see the next blogs). After that we came back to Istanbul for 1 more night.