Cappadocia - Day 1

After an exhausting day of traveling and site seeing
I still managed to wake up bright and early to eat (yemek) breakfast.

Good-Morning (Gunaydin) Urgup!

In Urgup

(Above)

Yesterday we were very tired of walking... but it was nothing compared to how much we walked today.  I'm pretty sure that this street sign stands for "legs breaking".

(below)

First stop in Cappadocia,

Goreme Open Air Museum

This 7 story rock was the nunnery and monastery in Goreme.

The bottom floor has a kitchen (mutfak) and dining hall

The many other floors included tunnels that led to several churches.  Many tunnels collapsed since.

Notice how tall it is.

(above)

Church entrance in Goreme

(above)

Carikli (Sandals) Church

(below)

The church is named for two footprints that are below the ascentation of Jesus.

The rumors are that they are Jesus's foot prints, but that is not accurate.

Carikli has two floors.  Throughout the church there are many scenes, 12 of them being stages in Jesus' life.

3 from His childhood, 2 in maturity, and 7 while suffering and ascending into heaven.

Fresco painting of the angel Gabriel

(Above)

In the center of the dome is Jesus.

Above him are angels.  Below him are the authors of the Bible; Matta, Lucas, John the baptist and Marcus.

(Above)

Written in one of the frescoes is "I am the light of the World, who follows me will not be left in the dark." - Jesus Christ

Other paintings include Virgin Mary and angels Michael and Uriel.

Table (Masa) and seating around it

(Above)

Walking through tunnels

(Above)

A view of Goreme

(Above)

After Goreme, we began walking when we ran into a pottery shop and stable with horses.  Horse back rides through Goreme?  Sounds great, but we decided we still had a list of things we wanted to see before the day ended.

We did stop and take a few photos, though.

(Below)

We then walked through modern day Goreme and took a bus to Uchisar.

More walking through that town till we came to the castle ruins.

This was the most populated area in Uchisar until it became dangerous and people started moving away.

(Below)

After our climb to the very top of the castle (that big rock mass in the picture above) we then carefully went back down and walked through the town and marketplace, took a road that we guessed would lead us to a bus, and began walking again.

On our walk we ran into the World's largest rooster... at least by our standards.

(Below)

In the middle of our walk we passed a large area where we later found out was called Pigeon Valley.

The valley had holes and doors and rooms carved out for pigeons!

Of course we ran into a ton of the birds too.

(Below)

We finally found a bus station...bench and sat.

The Dolmus came and we went back to Urgup for some dinner...

After all the walking I figured we deserved some junk food.

Snickers!!

Tomorrow is the last day in Urgup and still many more places to see before heading back to Izmir!