Cappadocia Day One: Red Tour

Simply put, Cappadocia (pronounced Cappa-doh-kia) has to be the most incredible place I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting. There really are no words that can describe how insanely unique and stunning the landscape is.

I spent a short but amazing two nights in Cappadocia and to make up for such a quick visit, I made sure that every single minute was spent exploring as much as humanly possible! It was exhausting but well worth it and I wouldn’t change a single thing about my time there.

We arrived first thing in the morning at Kayseri airport, where we picked up our hire car and drove just over an hour into Goreme, the main town in the heart of Cappadocia. After checking in to our very own Fairy Chimney cave hotel room, we wasted no time in setting off to explore the area.

First up on the itinerary, lunch…

…followed by horse riding through the Rose Valley.

After my recent horse riding adventure in Vegas, I was inspired to give it another try in Cappadocia as it’s such a fun and unique way to take in the sights around you. I’m not in any way an experienced, or even a remotely capable horse rider – which became very obvious when my horse decided to go rogue and start galloping off into the distance, with my clutching on for my dear life. It turns out the horses in Turkey were far less well-behaved than those in Vegas – a little warning for you! Luckily, it was still loads of fun and the views were insane! We even had a cute little homeless dog join us the whole way, leading the charge through the valleys.

Cappadocia has 4 main tours that operate in the area – the Red, Blue, Green and Yellow, each covering off a different region. After doing more research, I found that the best tours to see are the Red and Green, so I planned to go on a ‘Red Tour’ straight after our horse riding on Day 1. Since we had a car, we could easily do the Red Tour ourselves and it was much nicer doing it in our own time.

The red tour covers the north-east part of Cappadocia and generally lasts about 4 hours. It covers:

• Ancient village of Cavusin
• Pasabag
• Valley Devrent
• Love Valley
• Castle Uchisar
• Pigeon Valley
• Red Valley
• Rose Valley
• Urgup

Out first stop was the Goreme Open Air Museum. We were told if you only see one thing in Cappadocia then this should be it. Whilst I don’t necessarily agree with that, it’s still pretty amazing and very much worth a visit. Tickets cost 25 TL per person.

The Goreme Open Air Museum consists of a complex of monastries, each built with their own little church inside these amazing caves. during the 10th – 12th centuries.

Driving through the valleys was completely breathtaking. I kept pulling the car over to take more photos!

Our next stop was Uchisar Castle, where we went climbing over the rocks and scaled down the mountain to explore

Heights are one of my favourite things, there’s nothing quite like that adrenalin rush you get standing on the edge of a very high cliff 🙂

 

We drove through Avanos, a carpet weaving and pottery making, old Greek village in Cappadocia. We stopped off at this gorgeous pottery shop and despite closing up, the owner opened it up again for us and showed us around, explaining how he makes all his pottery and what everything is used for.

There were so many colours, it looked amazing! I couldn’t help but buy a few things to take home…

We then made our way to Sunset Point to watch one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen in my life.

I ordered an apple tea and make myself comfortable on a big cushion on the edge of another cliff. Front row seats!

The colours were just amazing…

As the sun went down, the night got chilly and it was time to get back in the car and head back to Goreme. A quick dinner and an early night, ready for a 4am start the next morning for my very first hot air balloon ride….

My most photogenic post is to follow shortly.

Kamila x
LNG