A travel day today - left Selcuk at 7.30 this morning and taken by Omar our driver for the last two days up to Izmir airport where we caught the plane to Istanbul and then the connection to Cappadocia, again meeting a driver who drove us here (1 hour)
Pictures cannot prepare you for this place - unbelievable landscape which I'm sure I will bore you with over the next couple of days. Had a wander around the markets this afternoon and then the serious excursions start in the morning with the greatly anticipated balloon flight.
Some random thoughts/impressions of Turkey as we near the end of our time here:
* breakfasts at the Bella Hotel - start with a dinner-plate each of fresh fruit (watermelon, honeydew,grapes, orange, tomato, plum, etc) followed by eggs however you like and turkish bread and jam (plum, peach, cherry) and coffee of course. Dinners were equally amazing. I paid the food bill this morning - 3x3 course dinners, 2 bottles of beautiful red wine and 3 big bottles of water - 232 Lira (i.e. Aus $160)
* Magnificent highways that go forever. Mostly good European cars but mixed with every old Renault 12 ever made I think along with most of the Fergy tractors ever made as well.
* Solar hot water systems everywhere - they cost about Aus$500 and last twenty years (and we're advanced???)
* The most friendly people you can imagine -and a great sense of humour(much like the Aussie self-deprecating type) - happy and will chat about anything - but in Istanbul will then try to sell you a carpet. Outside Istanbul not so pushy.
* Some real poverty mixed in with modern infrastructure and rubbish piled up in odd places. Istanbul very clean for such a huge place.
* Lots of physical labour - hoeing in the fields, digging trenches, barrowing cement, shepherds and goatherds watching flocks of twenty or so (mostly under a tree sitting on a plastic chair)
* whenever the vehicles pull up at a service station (and they seem to be about every 500m on the highways) out come the car washers.
* Soils looks very poor, but when you add water the crops - corn, rice, olives, figs (magnificent), pomegranits, cotton grow magnificently - 4 crops of strawberries a year!!
* ancient motor bikes and motor scooters (no-one wears helmets), even horses and carts crawling down the verge of the motorways amongst the semitrailers etc.
* Summary - the most varied and incredible country we've seen - anyone thinking of travelling must put this place on the itinerary.
* Trivia of the day: as above!
pictures: 1. view from the hotel balcony (Vezir Hotel) 2. the hotel exterior 3. our bedroom - inside a cave!
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