Touring Turkey / Cappadocia:

"... The last monk, living in one of these underground cities, passed away many years ago. Sad... We grew up with his stories. What he meant to us, is beyond words... he was the last one left. He was the last true Cappadocian. All of his life, he did his best to convince people that there is only one God, took it very serious and got really angry with us when we explained Cappadocia with below words:
'toy-land of the God of Nature'..."

Cappadocia is a 'must go' place... one day is not, two full days is hardly enough to see.
Looking at the map, it looks quite a distance from Istanbul. In fact, it is only a 75 minutes domestic flight from Istanbul, if there is no time to make a round trip Turkey tour.

It gives a new meaning to the word 'hidden'; ... a town... looking like all the other towns... walking around these houses, there you see a pass, like a cave... a corridor to a city under the town... an underground city that locals used to hide themselves in case of an attack... some having 12-15 minus floors. Continue... here is another cave; a cave with such advanced paintings; frescos 1000 years old... a church carved in rocks with well preserved frescos; depictions from the Babil !

If you can wake up early, do not miss a hot air balloon ride on sun rises... flying very close over the 'Fairy Chimneys' of Cappadocia. There you see a villager lady with her colorful costumes, working... cooking bread for breakfast or whatever... flying right over her... so close... she never looks up... ignoring... she is there, you see her, but it is as if she is from another world... that you cannot touch !
In fact, this is her world... we are from another !!!

And, the cave hotels of Cappadocia...
although the region offers standard accommodation similar to all hotels around the world, still do stay at a cave hotel. Most of these hotels are small / family run, having 10-15 rooms at the maximum and some do offer 5 star comfort in these cave rooms.

As a final word,
we; tour guides, always get this question from our guests spending time with us in Turkey:
" How many times have you been to ... Aren't you bored of explaining the same things all the time? "
Ladies & Gentlemen,
the designer of this web-site (that is me; Kagan) has been to Cappadocia over 100 times in past over 15 years. I would visit Cappadocia 100 more times and still find it very interesting. There is nothing like Cappadocia in our small World.