Turkey Adventures and the week after

I'm so so so bad! I've been meaning to update this for weeks and its not that I've been overly busy, except for while I was away in Turkey. But somehow I just keep letting the days slip away. I've now been through another Eid here, so more down time (a whole week off... with nothing to do). I was ready to come back to work this week. But at the end of this week I get to fly home and spend 3 weeks in TN for Christmas. I'm in desperate need of some family and puppy time, so it can't come soon enough. Work has been frustrating lately with all the time off, from a society that doesn't exactly have the strongest work ethic... which is to say they look for every excuse not to work. When I'm getting this cynical, I know its time for a break! Even though I just had a small break in Turkey!

Adam and I went to Turkey for 10 days over Thanksgiving and we had a great time. We split our time between Istanbul and the Cappadocia region. Overall I loved Turkey and I can't wait to explore more of it because its such a diverse country. That being said, I'm pretty much done with Istanbul, even at the end of November in the pouring rain it was really crowded with tourist seeing all of the major attractions, just like us. We saw the Blue Mosque, the Agia Sophia, the Topkapi Palace, the Basilica Cisterns, walked around the grand bazaar (ok I really enjoyed that one!), the spice market, etc. We stayed in the tourist section, so we could walk to everything. And the hotels were decent, small, but noisy!! The street we stayed on had construction going on and they literally worked 24 hours a day (SO different from Kurdistan!), at 3 am they had a concrete truck pouring concrete! So we couldn't sleep well and it rained most of the time we were in Istanbul, so crowded, rainy, no sleep, lots of walking (in the rain), means Istanbul wasn't the greatest part of our trip. But it is a cool city and I'm glad I've experienced it. However, the gem of the trip was Cappadocia. We flew from Istanbul to Nevesehir, only a one our flight and got picked up and brought to our hotel in Urgup, where we were the only patrons!

Cappadocia
So Cappadocia is the name of a region in Central (Anatolia) Turkey that is unique because of the kind of stone that is ubiquitously distributed throughout the land. Thousands of years ago, this area was full of volcanoes and lava covered the whole area. This lava turned into a kind of rock called tufa, which is very very soft (can be manipulated with fingernails), so it has been shaped by wind, water, and overall erosion into crazy shapes and patterns throughout the years. Also, harder stone, such as limestone settled on top of the tufa, which creates some of the weirdly balanced columns you'll see in my pictures. The whole place kind of looks like it belongs on another planet or like you're walking around on a sci-fi set. http://picasaweb.google.com/chelseajaccard/CappadociaTurkey# Click on that to see some photos! So we first stayed in a little town called Urgup and stayed in this great boutique hotel that had recently been renovated and it was done tastefully and traditionally. We were the only people staying our first night so it was quiet and peaceful. The hotel happened to be right next to a winery, how convenient! So we went for a tasting and bought a bottle or four. We enjoyed our new wine on the roof top of our hotel with a nice sunset overlooking the bizarre landscape. Everything was in house with this hotel, they provided dinner and breakfast and we hired our tour guide for our hiking tour (which provided lunch) all within the hotel. Very convenient and the owner was really nice and spoke English and really appreciated our business (its low season there, and unlike Istanbul, there really weren't other tourist around).

So our second day in Cappadocia was our big hiking day, we started walking at 9 and stopped around 4. We walked through what they call rose valley b/c there's iron ore in the tufa, so it has a red hue (other places have sulfur and are yellow, etc). It was awesome climbing around in this stuff. Another key feature of this stone is that because it is so soft, it is easily carved out to create living quarters, so in times past people lived in the stone and carved churches out of it. This used to be a predominately Christian area. So you'll be walking and all of a sudden come upon an old church with Frescoes painted on the walls, our guide was telling us that they dated back to the 3rd and 4th century... don't know how true that is, but regardless they're old. In addition, this stone isn't just above ground, its underground too, so back in the day when Christians were being persecuted in Turkey they carved out whole underground cities and lived there to hide. We toured one and while it was pretty crazy to imagine people living there, it was one of those overly crowded tourist things (several bus loads of Koreans were down there at the same time as us), so it wasn't that enjoyable. Plus it was dark and small, the passages between rooms you had to crouch and walk b/c they were only about 3 feet in height. Though still cool to have seen. Anyway, back to the cool hike which we did enjoy. After walking for a few hours we came to a town (sadly I forget the name) where we were to have lunch, but we were early so we got to explore the old section of the city, which was about 100 feet high maybe 400-500 feet wide carved out of this stone, where everyone used to live. It has since been condemned and no one can live there, but the structure is still there and we scrambled up, down, around, through, inside, etc for just over an hour and truly, truly enjoyed ourselves. I know Adam had a few scary moments when he lost footing and was hanging over the valley holding on with one hand... but he saved himself and while I didn't attempt climbing on the exterior walls, I did my share of scrambling as well. It's a crazy place to imagine people living. And if you decide that day that you want a new bookshelf, you just start digging into your wall and viola in a few minutes you have it! Renovations were a snap! :) After lunch our walk continued through more extra terrestrial like landscape (again check the photos link) until we came upon a road where some churches in the rock served as another big tourist land b/c the big buses could pull right up to it. I'm really glad we were able to spend the day walking through the landscape, not be zipped around via bus. Another quiet dinner at our hotel with some more wine from our neighborhood winery capped off a perfect day.

The next day we moved hotels to our own personal cave in Uchisar, the hotel is called museum hotel and it was spectaular. We stayed in the Khandil Cave and it was Adam's Birthday, so we walked around trying to find some lunch once we got there, but again b/c it is low season, nothing was open so we had to walk a long way and poor Adam was VERY sore from his antics the day before. We eventually found a restaurant and the door was locked, but I knocked and they let us in and served us, again we were the only people there. It was a very nice lunch, but this part of town was quiet expensive, oh well. The rest of the trip we enjoyed our cave hotel with our awesome views and expensive food (they had mojitos, for $15 each, we had 4)! One day back in Istanbul allowed for me to find the perfect lantern and then back to Erbil. We had 5 days in Erbil before Adam had to go back to Baghdad and we mostly relaxed and watched movies and ate (and road go carts).

So that brings me up to date, after Adam left it was Eid, and I sat around and did nothing, though we FINALLY got propane for our apartment, so I could cook. Now just have to make it through this work week and then I'm home for three weeks!