Today we started at the relaxed and civilized time of 10am, with a visit to the Kaymaki Underground City which was really interesting. The cave we visited is eight stories deep but the first four floors only are open. The caves had everything from wineries to cemeteries to churches to kitchens. The passage ways are narrow and could be closed quickly if invaders came by rolling huge stones across the passageways. This is not a visit for people not willing to squat down to walk or who have claustrophobia though…some passages were pretty tight and most of us hit our head at least once today. We stepped into the lower level wine making area to do some pretend grape stomping (Lucy of “I Love Lucy” did it much better!).

After leaving the caves, we went to lunch, another nice Turkish lunch with Turkish ravioli, Turkish “dolma”, and pasta with walnuts and salad.

Next we went to the Uchisar Castle, the biggest “fairy chimney” in the area. The rock was used as a fortress during the late Byzantine and early Ottoman periods.

After leaving Uchisar Castle, we drove to the Rose Valley area and hiked around a bit. The rock formations are beautiful. It wasn’t too sunny but the pink colors of the terrain and varying colors were still really nice. We stopped first for fresh squeezed pomegranate and orange juice, which was delicious. And on the way down I had many snacks of fresh, wild arugula which is plentiful here and in bloom right now.

We ended up at “love valley”…I’ll leave it to you to figure out how it got its name.

And that’s a wrap on the touring part of Cappadocia, though I may have a balloon flight tomorrow…depending on the weather. We fly in the afternoon to Istanbul and leave for the States on Friday.