Cappadocia – 1st September

On Monday 1st September Captain Caveman and I started our month and day watching the hot air balloons at sunrise from the terrace of Mithra Cave Hotel in Göreme, Cappadocia – how romantic. It’s a very strange sensation and is eerily quiet aside from the sounds of the flames roaring in the balloons, which are very close. We were out for 90 minutes before the sun finally got over the mountain at 6.30am and then Captain Caveman went off to explore and I lost him before breakfast. He went on to a building site while I followed some wood pigeons down a hill.

It was too early for breakfast so, back in the room, I checked August’s blog progress and set a September budget. My blog in August had received 173% more views compared to the previous month’s and I had finally managed to get Vietnam readers back in to the top 10. The top 3 countries for views in August were the UK, Turkey and the Netherlands, followed by France, USA, Vietnam, Spain, Ireland, Australia and then Sweden.
At breakfast, it was a bit of a free for all and the food was absolutely lovely. There was so much choice of all the different types of Turkish breakfast dishes to help yourself to. We sat on the terrace to eat and there were quite a few wasps, which most of the foreigners flapped about at. Interestingly, I didn’t spot any English people but maybe it was the wrong time of year for Cappadocia for the Brits.
Today we were on the Red Tour with a group of randoms and were being picked up at 9.30am.

For those of you who are able, I recommend you visit it yourself, we visited the following sites; Zelve, Paşabag, Avanos, Dervent (Imagination) Valley, Uçhisar Castle, and Love Valley – most of it was rocky, hilly and very sunny so it was quite hot for me but Captain Caveman was so happy. The trip included lunch which was a soup, a kebab with mezes and was pretty good to say we were on an organised trip. The water was also included. We didn’t have to pay anything extra to the 100 Euros we had paid for the trip and we met some nice people, including our guide, Mr H. I wasn’t sure how Captain Caveman would adapt to being a customer on a tour, rather than the leader, but he enjoyed it and we both had very dirty feet and legs when we got back to the hotel.

In the evening, we decided to try out the ‘Buy one get one free’ wine at the Forked Road pub. We sat on the roof terrace and ended up having 4 glasses of decent wine and a bottle of water for 1,134 lira (£21).

We’d seen a hotel with a gorgeous swimming pool which we wished we had booked so we decided to go there for another glass of wine and a nosey round the hotel. It was just 770 lira (£14.26) for 2 glasses of wine with a 10% tip but with a poolside view. I spoke to a member of staff to see if they had rooms to stay there after our current hotel booking finished. He made us a deal for €160 (£140) for a good room and we thought about booking it tomorrow. For dinner we went to a restaurant opposite where we had eaten last night. Turkish Ravioli had a more varied menu and we had a bit of a feast, they didn’t sell alcohol, though. Here’s what we had with prices in lira;

1 Big bottle of water 40
2 Icli Kofte (Bulgarballs) 260
1 Saç Tava (chicken on a tray) 900
1 Clay pot beef 950
Total spent 2,150 lira (£40)

It was definitely the best meal in Cappadocia so far and we both really enjoyed it.

Gratitude List
1. Mithra Hotel breakfast
2. The Red Tour in Cappadocia with Mr H
3. A fantastic evening in Cappadocia with Captain Caveman.