Leaving Istanbul

Istanbul to Goreme

It's dawn as we race across the Anatolian coutryside bathed in golden sunlight. "It looks like a junkyard" says Jane" there are lots of broken houses and high rise buildings in the distance".

It's starting to look more middle eastern and much less European today.

A sleepless night dispelled any remaining romantic notions of overnight train travel, We breakfast in the dining car drinking instant coffee and hoping we can survive the day long bus trip we have today.

I hate bus rides. I think it was instilled in me by long school trip bus rides. Whatever the cause I am dreading the all day affair that will takes us to capodocia in central Turkey. But no. These guys have it sorted. A steward on board brings snacks, chi (tea), coffee and water. It beats easyjet hands down. And we stop for lunch too!

Ok we did cheat. The kids have movies to watch on my old laptop that I resurrected for this trip. But only enough battery for 1 movie.

We arrive at "Goreme" only to find we have to transfer to a smaller bus into town. We've made friends with the only other English speakers on the bus. 2 New Yorkers with a local friend as guide and a Swiss fella. It's good to be able to chat to someone without them trying to sell you a carpet.

Once off the bus we ask at the tourist office where the "Star Cave pension" is (we did allow the travel agent in Istanbul to sell us a hotel, out of good faith for his service!). They call and someone drives down to pick us up. It's 2 min trip to our cave and home for the next 2 nights. Star Pension is like most of the pensions in Goreme. An existing home that was carved into the hillside and then extended for guests. All you needed is a jackhammer for home extensions here. Our room has 2 connecting bedrooms and a bathroom. The only windows are in the room are by the door. The rest is......a cave. With wooden floors, a few wall rugs and tiled bathroom of course.

I awoke at dawn the next day to take a few snaps and was surprised to find the dawn sky full of hot air balloons. At €600 we declined a ride fearing Flynn might be too scared anyway. After breakfast we walked over to the open air museum about 3 km away. It's a collection of caves, mostly churches and a nunnery with some beautiful and very old Christian paintings covering the ceilings. The kids loved squeezing through tiny doorway and through tunnels. The dinning hall/cave had a 30 seat table carved out of solid rock. A dusty walk back into town and we stopped at a Pide (Turkish pizza) restaurant for lunch. And after a sunset stroll through the hills it was home for a movie and Dad popped out for pizza (again) and beers.

With the holidays (Eid) fast approaching we'd booked all our buses in Turkey ahead of time so the next day we headed of to town to get a bus to Kayseri where we had a 0730 bus booked to Adana in the south. From there we'd be on our own to get to Aleppo (Haleb). We'd run into an Aussie girl at the Star Pension who worked at a local cafe so we parked up our packs and spent the morning using the WIFI and drinking proper latte's.