Day 15. 25th April 2026 cappadoia - lest we forget

 Good morning on Anzac day from Göreme.


My way of starting the day was watching the hot air balloons float by from the hotel terrace at dawn.

It was special in its own way and i could still be reflective.





I must be honest and admit i am struggling a little whilst being here.

I cannot for the life of me work out where we stayed back in 1989.

I know we had a room in one of these rock structures but i cant work out where?

Most of the hotels are free standing here now so not sure how we slept in a rock.


Unexpectedly, it’s a beautiful day so today might be the day to get ourselves out to the white cliffs and fairy chimneys ( previously known as penises)


Again we looked at a  couple of tours but the added extras of wine tasting or pottery classes wasn’t doing it for us.


So after a hearty Turkish breakfast we headed off and first stop is the Göreme open air museum. It was about 20 minute walk out of town which was very pleasant.


We felt the €20 entry was a little steep ( the locals pay 200 Turkish lira, about €4) yeah, yeah, i know what you’re saying. I mention it as a comparison for the blog only. 

The wander around was alright. These houses and churches are all built or rather dug out of these crazy volcanic structures.

I gather this all started with a group of hermits, involved religion and commune like living. 

There are many churches, some tiny. We were not allowed to take photos of the friezes. Unfortunately there were no signs in Chinese. The friezes were amazing, especially for over 1000 years old.

Stuart was a bit disappointed that the wasn’t a restored “house” that demonstrated how they lived.











Next in a taksi to the love valley trail head, where we will walk amongst the  fairy chimneys that they are now called( or phalic spires in my day thus its called Love Valley)

Also through the white cliffs and hoping to end at Ųchisar. Which has a huge ‘castle’.

Surprisingly easy, the driver of the taksi knew exactly where we wanted to go! 

Described as a 2 hour walk, took us about 3 hours with photo stops. We wont describe anything: let the photos do that. 

It was a little tough ( the walk) but softened by just so much to see.


Wonderful timing, as we came back up to the road i receive a txt from Harry.

So here we are, in the middle of nowhere having a video call with Harry and Tina in London. Magnificent!


Got ourselves another taksi back to Göreme. These trips cost about $8 AUD.


Productive afternoon, little bit of washing before heading upstairs to our terrace.






























Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The adventurous lead up 10th April 2026

Image
This was to be called "not the Stans IYKYK" but we reconsidered this as a bit obscure.  It has certainly been quite the adventure, and we haven't left yet!  First, We found out the United Kingdom of great Britain and Ireland has changed the rules. If you are a citizen you MUST enter using a UK passport. In broad terms if your father was born in UK (like Stuart) you must use a UK passport or Relinquish your citizenship or obtain an enduring certificate of entry  these last two can take many months to process. so multiple original documents, including Australian passport was sent off to UK to obtain said passport...and it has arrived 10 days before departure. the Australian passport to arrive a couple of days later. talk about stressful! Secondly this trip, apart from the essential education component (conference in Marrakesh), was to visit the "Stans";  Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan & Kazakhstan. we thought we might give Pakistan  and...
Read more

Official Day 1 10 th April 2026 Travelling into the 11th April

Image
 Now it might seem a little strange that get to the UK this time, we are flying to across the guts of Australia to Perth.  It was another brilliant idea we had,  to test drive the 17 hour Perth to London flight. Our boys have both done and remarked that it wasn’t too bad, so we thought we would give it a go. As our luck would have it, the event in the Middle East changed all that and QF 9 doesn’t exist for the time being. It’s a Perth to Singapore ( for a 2 hour refueling stop) and then onto London. I think a total of about 29 hours. We have a flight to catch after our London arrival to get to Marrakesh, our seat of learning and education. That was all fine before we were heading to Singapore. We originally were arriving at Heathrow at 5am which gave us plenty of time to get to Gatwick for our 2pm flight to Marrakesh. Now we will be arriving at 10am with a very quick dash to the other side of London to get that flight. It seems there has been a definite tone set for this...
Read more

Day 3 ourika valley monday 13 april 2026

Image
  Today we are going on an adventure out the Ourika Valley, one of many in the Atlas mountains. Fairly low in the mountain but high enough to host a pretty waterfall. We meet our bus at 9am about a 5 minute walk away and get comfy for a trip of about an hour out of Marrakesh. The traffic out of Marrakesh is crazy but we finally emerge. Its nice being on this little bus ( with a bunch of very noisy French people) The views ahead are of the beautiful snow capped mountain range with Morocco just coming out of winter. Very pretty but hard to capture. First stop was the very busy car park beside the river with these little mini tourist buses going everywhere. I guess we wont be the only ones here today… Our mission before we have lunch by the river is to complete a 1 and half hour hike up to Sti Fadma or the top of the waterfall that we can get to by foot. Not a patch on our Purlingbrook but pretty all the same. The hike was a little unexpected, being very steep and narrow in places. Es...
Read more