07 June 2007

Turkey 04: Hot Air Ballooning

18 May 2007 (Friday)
9:45 AM
Pamukkale, en route to Ephesus

I am pleasantly shocked at how much is powered by solar energy. From tiny villages to the biggest cities, solar panels on every rooftop, some more conspicuous than others, sitting beside water tanks warming in the sun. It's impressive. Almost too impressive... Must be a law, or an ordinance, or maybe it's actually cheaper.

This is fast becoming the "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" trip. The past two days have been packed sunrise to sunset.

Back to Cappadocia...

- First night, dinner at S.O.S., and it was so great. Tons of food for 10 TYL. Awesome bread, salad, crazy good fries, and our entreé, the "pot kebab": Veggies (for us) cooked in a sealed clay pot that we hammered open at our table.

goreme
Terrible photo because I forgot my flash

goreme

We talked with the son of the restaurant's owner for a while... Or rather, he talked, we listened. Not in an annoying way, he was just so full of energy and excitement about everything it was hard to interject. I keep saying it, but everyone is so unbelievably nice here! And not just helpful nice, but genuinely interested and funny nice.

- Next morning, 16 May, we're up at 5am for our balloon ride. I have literally been waiting my entire life to ride in a hot air balloon. Mama, boyfriend, best friend... All scared of heights. Our ride took us out to the balloon-port, a big field near the UFO Museum.

(Wonder if that's where some of the content comes from... Mr. UFO Caretaker peers groggily out his window upon waking, his vision not yet focused, he sees a huge, sailing orb in the sky....)

cappadocia hot air balloon

There were several other companies setting up shop, too. We were riding with Sultan, who had two balloons taking off that morning, lying on their sides filling with air. They just use giant fans to fill them! One was not filling so well. It was not ours. Our pilot — all balloon drivers are licensed pilots — was named Ishmael. Jolly guy. Our basket, or gondola, was packed, maybe 16 people, including a group of old Korean ladies who were all the same height, same hair, all wearing red.

cappadocia hot air balloon

cappadocia hot air balloon

cappadocia hot air balloon
That's my ass climbing into the basket

Didn't even feel the balloon take-off, just all of a sudden we were airborne, skimming the earth, clipping some trees. At one point I counted 21 balloons in the sky. Then we went higher and higher until the few people on the ground were mere specks. We were maybe 1000 meters? I'm not sure, unfortunately. In any case, it was like a live version of Google Earth, the way we zoomed in and out, sailing up and down, in and around valleys, even breezing past someone's bedroom window. Guess that's the risk you take when you live in a fairy chimney.

cappadocia hot air balloon

cappadocia hot air balloon

cappadocia hot air balloon
That's our hotel!

cappadocia hot air balloon

cappadocia hot air balloon

cappadocia hot air balloon

cappadocia hot air balloon

cappadocia hot air balloon
Balloon in the valley!

Landing was impressive, if only for the complete randomness of it. Because you're at the whim of the winds, you can never precisely plan your route, and certainly not your landing site, so when you see something good, you go for it. In our case, we dropped right down in the middle of a road, blocking traffic for a sec (one driver got out to take photos... I imagine a hot air balloon landing direct in front of your car is always a novel experience no matter how many float overhead on a daily basis). The ground crew travels around following you as close as possible, and they were right there when we set down. Ishmael lifted the balloon up again, and with a crazy sharp precision that trumps even my most spectacular parallel parks, sets the balloon basket snugly into the flatbed of the crew truck. See, the baskets are far too heavy to lift up, even after all us tourists crawl out, so they have to land it on a vehicle. Amazing.

After a successful flight, champagne toast! At 7 AM on no breakfast! All right! We got flight certificates.

cappadocia hot air balloon

Back at the hotel, exhilarated and exhausted, we packed in breakfast before jetting off for our 9-hour Cappadocia tour extravaganza. Yowz. Killing some time hanging with the house kittens (maybe a month old?) and the free internet. Oh, in addition to the solar energy, Turkey is completely wired! There's wi-fi all over this remote mountain town.

Tour tales to come.

goreme

05 June 2007

Turkey 03: Arrival and Göreme

15 May 2007
6:00 PM
Göreme, Cappadocia

Already twenty-four hours to catch up on. This is going to be a long trip. Bullets for a tired brain:

- Found Gail immediately in Istanbul! I was running late (plane delayed), so I took a taxi from the airport to Sultanahmet. 25 lira, when the Metro is 2. Boo. Had fun chatting with the cabbie, literally looking up every word as I spoke it to him. We talked food, gas, Chicago Bulls, George Bush, and sunglasses. Not bad for my one-hour crash course in Turkish on the plane.

- My first Turkish dinner was Indian. The man with the fancy shoes from my plane was arriving as we left! (I may not have mentioned him.... On the short flight from Zurich, there was a very, very tall man sitting behind me who stretched his legs straight down the aisle, almost into my seat. He was wearing fancy shoes.)

istanbul
View from the Indian restaurant

- We booked a hotel for our return to Istanbul in a week or so, then took the Metro back to the airport for our nighttime flight to Kayseri. Cappadocia! So excited. Didn't see much of Istanbul in my glorified layover, mostly out of choice. Want to save it for next week when I have time.

- We were super early to the airport. Us, and many Japanese tourists. Slept on the bench. By this point, I've been up for a day and a half. The plane ride was fine, not full so we had our own row. Ate a salad, at midnight. Stole the turquoise fleece Turkish Airlines blanket. There was a bit of a luggage scare upon landing in Kayseri. The airport divides luggage by citizenship.. How they know, I do not know.. We must have been marked at the airport. Anyway, we were waiting and waiting on the foreigners side 'til there was nothing more coming down the chute. Ours got sent to the locals.

- Our ride to the hotel was waiting for us when we finally emerged, with a sign, with my name spelled terribly wrong. After a speeding, swerving, star-studded, hour-long drive through pitch black darkness, we arrive at the cave hotel. It is crazy awesome. Like a fairy-tale tower, we had to march up what seemed like a thousand steps to me at that point. Adorable built-ins, fancy fixtures, weird but hot shower.

goreme

This is what we first saw of the Cappadocia landscape:

goreme

This is what we woke up to:

goreme

goreme

- Six hours of sleep to wake in time for breakfast. They had a great spread. Cheese, breads, borek, cereal, omelets, fruit, yogurt, olives if you're into that sort of thing. We took our time.

- Made all kinds of arrangements for tomorrow: Hot air balloon ride at 5 AM, followed almost immediately by a 9-hour tour of the whole region. Crazy tired already. It's a very touristy itinerary, but why not. Not like I'll be back here in a week. We also booked our overnight bus to Pamukkale. 35 lira, cheapest accommodations yet. Also got out hotel there for the following night, for 25 Euro! I am loving the cheap.

- From Kelebek, we walked to the Göreme Open Air Museum, which contains a series of Byzantine churches carved right in to the rock. Frescoes ranging from ehhh to amazing. Lots of tourist groups, French, German, Spanish, Japanese. Hot. Very hot. Climbed a lot.

goreme

goreme

- On the walk back, we went to the UFO Museum. (!) The man running the joint (and undoubtedly the man-behind-the-Martians) had to power-up the lights and spooky music for us. Quite possibly the best 3 lira I will spend on this trip.

goreme

- When we got back to the hotel, we moved rooms. Our first wasn't available for two nights. It's still very cute, fewer windows, but there's a weird smell. Hmm.

- We're now sitting out on the terrace, writing postcards (and journals). I really need a set up like this at home: raised platform, all cushioned and draped with rugs, billowing canopy, looking out over the mountains. Really good for napping...

goreme

04 June 2007

Turkey 02: Switzerland

14 May 2007
2:35 PM
Over Croatia

Halfway through the second leg to Istanbul. Just got served something Hot Pocket-esque, and it hit that proverbial spot. Famished. This is also a nice plane, with a very diverse mix of passengers. Young folks and families looking like they're heading for holiday, Turks returning home, and a gaggle of Japanese tourists. I had to surrender my cozy window seat to a sick passenger. Trying to learn Turkish in the span of an hour. Turkche beelmeeyorum? Evet? Hayir? Vegetarianeem. How you say, hopeless?

Zurich was lovely for a moment. Bought an adapter and... a Swatch! A Swatch from Switzerland! But like a dolt I went and bought one with no numbers on it, so I'll still have no idea what time it is.



All accounts make it seem like getting to Sultanahmet will be a breeze. Let's hope they're right. Haven't memorized the word for "Help" yet.

Turkey 01: On The Plane

13 May 2007
about 8:00 PM
Just outside of Chicago

(About that "about" time: First order of business upon landing in Zurich... BUY A WATCH. Seems the thing to do in Switzerland.)

The moment when you realize this thing that you've been speaking of for months, that has existed solely in your mind up to now, that sounds so exotic when said aloud but in reality terrifies you a bit, that moment just hit me about ten minutes ago. I'm alone on a gigantic airplane going to Turkey. (Well, Switzerland first, but who's counting.)

The realization or feeling in and of itself didn't surprise me. It was the subsequent thought: I'm really glad there's someone to meet on the other side. This traveling alone business is getting old.* Or maybe I'm just getting old. Either way, my spontaneous, semi-stranger traveling companion Gail arrived in Istanbul yesterday, so I'm headed directly to the Blue Mosque to meet her.

*Note: However, I would do Paris alone again in a heartbeat.

Flight update.... I am loving SwissAir. First time flyer, and I expected it to be a notch above the rest since that's just how the Swiss do. The agents were very polite and helpful, as are the flight attendants. Duty-free catalog kind of rules pretty hard. Then there's the entertainment system...

In addition to the in-seat TVs (YAY), the controls, usually just built into the armrest, pull out like a remote control! This is a new one for me. On top of the usual movies, TV, and radio, there are games. And not just games... trivia. Turn the controller sideways, and the buttons are arranged like Nintendo. I've already played the surprisingly and refreshingly difficult trivia, which has a vs. mode so you can play other passengers! I'm easily amused.

Only bummer... The movies suck. And the ones I've seen, thought they sucked, too. Watching "Children of Men" again because it's the lesser of several evils (including "Catch and Release" and something awful with Renee Zellweger). As fate would have it, my very disappointing dinner — which smelled divine, but tasted drab — was served at the very moment that Ki gives birth in C of M. Bon appetit!