21st May 2008
We woke up this morning and were fed a massive breakfast and then we were show around town again, this time on bikes. I wasn’t actually sure if I could still ride a bike, but it wasn’t long before I got the hang of it again. I guess you never forget. I even brought my phone along, so we all had some music to ride to. It was great riding down by Egidir’s beautiful lake, with Beautiful Day by U2 playing. We were taken to another old, abandoned church, which the locals had graffitied all over, which I didn’t think much of before we went back to the Pension for our long onward drive to Cappadocia.
On the way to Cappadocia, we visited a large city called Konya, which is the religious capital of Turkey and is where the Whirling Dervishes come from. We had lunch here at a nice little pide place and then we went to visit the Mevlana museum. Mevlana is the guy who started the whole whirling dervish thing. Did you know it isn’t really a dance? It’s an attempt to get closer to god through that whole dizzy feeling you get from twirling.
The museum was pretty cool, and we got to visit Mevlana’s tomb also. We did another one of our characteristic inspections at Hotel Ulusan and wandered around being shown all the bits and pieces in the city. We left Konya, on The Silk Road. We stopped at a rundown caravanserai which had this strange lake behind it that apparently gets fed from an underground water source. We then stopped at the largest caravanserai on the silk road at Sultanhanni, which was absolutely spectacular and deserted to boot.
Nigel and I managed to climb right up the central tower in the middle, even though the stairs were quite harrowing. We got to the top and Paul took our picture peeking out of the window. The back of it was all vaulted and very dark, which was kind of eerie, being that the place wasn’t full of tourists. We left the caravanserai and continued on to Goreme.
By the time we arrived in Cappadocia it was dark, and it was an amazing seeing all the formations all lit up at night! We got into our place, Shoestring Pension, which is a real cave! Can you believe I’ve gone from sleeping in a tree house to a cave in the last three days? We were all pretty tired and the guys at the hotel cooked us a BBQ over a wheelbarrow, which was really nice. Despite how tired we were it didn’t stop Nigel and I going out to the pub with Vanessa and Burak. Vanessa left quite early, and I played one of the guys there at pool for a bit and cheekily marched myself behind the bar and began going through the Dj’s music. It wasn’t long though before Burak also wanted to leave. I really didn’t want to leave, but I was dragged from Pacha Bar….how annoying.