Venice to Istanbul with Paul and Shirley September 2024

September 25, 2024

Anatolia

Weather clear sunny, 80’s

What a day! Woke up at 1:30 to get ready to leave the ship. Viking stages the departures by color coded luggage tags. Some guests left at 2 AM, we were called to depart at 3 AM. They did have coffee and muffins and croissants while we waited in the Atrium of the ship. Then began the long trek out of the ship, through the Cruise Terminal, through Passport control, over to identify our large bags that were packed and set out last night, rolled the bags to the busses, put them in the queue to be delivered to the Conrad Bosporus, then got on the bus labeled Aqua 2.

There were 26 of us on that bus. 120 Viking guests opted for the Cappadocia Extension. Our guide for the duration is Gokhan (the o has an umlaut). Gokhan is very energetic and during the 40 minute drive to the airport (light traffic) he explained the drill so that when we go there, we kinda knew what to do.

Gokhan our guide taken later

Intense security greeted us at this massive airport – only 3 years old. We were scanned when we entered the building. We made our way to the “G” set of robot boarding pass dispensers (done by scanning our passports). Turkish Airlines had ample help there to assist the technically challenged, or those (like Paul) who is hated by robots for some unknown reason.

With boarding pass in hand, some checked luggage (by scanning the boarding pass and placing the suitcase on the scale – that robot activated the conveyor belt that delivered to the suitcase into the black hole and spit out a claim check). Then Gokhan led the group to a second set of scanners. This was a more intense scrutiny – belts, all metal, and naked laptops, iPads, iPhones, and iWatches all had to be run through the machine separate from the bags, and we were x-rayed. Some were patted down.

Then onto the gate past many shops, food places and standard airport fare to gate G2B. We boarded the Boeing 737 on time and took off on time and landed on time. Only one person (in Group Aqua 1)’s bag did not arrive. (Later we discovered because they had vectored it to the Hilton, and did not bring it to the airport.) We landed on time (7:45 AM) in Kayesi – a city about the size of Chattanooga. Here we met our bus driver Hadji and we drove 90 minutes to the Cappadocia area.

Geography/Geology lesson:

Anatolia/Asia Minor/Turkey/Turkiye is all the same area. In the central part of the country, in eons past, volcanoes deluged this area with tufa (look it up) and later Basalt. Then eons of erosion sculpted the valleys into these odd shapes called fairy chimneys or Hoo-Doo’s in this triangle area in central Anatolia. The epicenter maybe a town called Avenos. Our centrally located hotel is in a town called Urgup. The UNESCO site is Goreme. All worth looking up on Wikipedia.

Our first stop was at the Outdoor Museum of Cave Churches dating from the 10^th and 11^th century at Goreme. Here the monks and nuns carved into the tufa churches, nunneries, monasteries and communal dining halls. They decorated them with frescoes of beautiful scenes from the lives of Christ and the Saints. We visited 4 ‘churches’ of varying beauty, Perhaps an internet search of the dark church on the Goreme complex may yield some pictures.

We then paid $6 to enter the “dark church”, so named because of the lack of light (and so the frescoes were preserved wonderfully. Unfortunately, photos were not permitted inside any of these places. Shirley bought Paul a book however and so that will keep the memory alive. We were both in awe. This is a holy place. And so we took a picture on the outside.

After we left Goreme, we went to lunch at a tour bus restaurant and ate a 5 course Turkish meal of … Good stuff.

After lunch we drove to a few other hot spots (the mushroom valley and the imagination valley) where took many pictures and walked around a bit. These areas are in every valley around this part of the country – some more amazing than others. We killed enough time so that our Hotel was ready to receive us.