Day 4 - Cappadocia Region, Goreme, Turkey

We arrived at midnight at our pension in goreme cappadocia. We were greeted by one of the staff saying they were not expecting us for another two days; the only reason he knew we were coming was due to our tour calling to confirm the day before.
This was the last evening of ramazan festival and the pension was full. Luckily someone else had checked out a couple hours before so we were able to have a room with 5 beds to ourselves.
The alarm the next morning was set for 5 am. It was a rough start but worth it as we were picked up by a shuttle and taken to a large field where about 20 hot air balloons were being laid out and preparing for flight. We had some chocolate marbled homemade cake with tea and were signed to a balloon.

We walked over and were astounded by the beauty of our and the other balloons preparation; it was like watching it come to life.

The balloon trip took us high and low in valleys and over the cappadocia region for over an hour and half. It will take a while to sort through the couple hundred of pictures matt and I both took. We finished the trip on a plateau and enjoyed a glass of champagne while taking it all in. All this before 9am; talk about productivity! :)

After a nap, we travelled by 2 buses to Derinkuyu; a medium sized village where there a an 8 level underground city. There are 5 of the underground cities in this area but this is the largest. All were used to hide Christians during a Muslim invasion by the Persians during the 6th and 7th century ad. 10,000 people lived there for months at a time. The sign outside the city ironically said people went here to escape from invaders but the personal classification of either was not mentioned. A mosque is situated very closely as well.

A long return on the buses brought us back where we moved into a proper double cave room in the

pension; which is carved out of a

cappadocia chimney rock. A lovely dinner, wine, and to bed early ended our day. We walked 6 miles this day.