So we have woken up back in the town of Goreme
at the Goreme camping and Aqua Park,
Marianne is just prepping the van
and we're going to go exploring today,
there are some more places in Cappadocia that we want to show you guys.
So, you ready love? Ready!
Lets Go!
We are Marianne and Chris.
In May 2018, we quit our 9-5 jobs,
rented our house to travel full time.
Due to the pandemic our attempt to drive around the world has been put on pause.
Finding ourselves in Turkey,
we are going to show you the best this country has to offer.
Okay we have arrived at our first destination,
parked up, what a view!
and there's little love hearts down there on the railing!
So let's go and show you guys what's here.
So Cappadocia has lots of different valleys
and this particular one is called love valley, I'm not sure why they call it love valley?
Because there are love hearts here! there are love hearts here.
Love hearts at Love valley,
what a wonderful view and another beautiful blue sunny sky day here in Cappadocia.
So this valley - Love valley gets its name from the unusual natural shapes of the stones and rock formations here,
And the best way to police this region would be a quad bike or maybe a horse.
That's an impressive horse!
We learned recently that Cappadocia means the land of beautiful horses,
and these are beautiful horses!
It's so lovely,
amazing,
he's gorgeous isn't he, so handsome!
What an absolutely fabulous place!
Cappadocia it's so different to other parts of Turkey,
and in fact we've never seen anywhere in the world like it,
it is absolutely stunning,
and each rock formation is different and and the idea and the concept of how it was all created
hundreds and thousands of years ago is just mind-blowing.
We're delighted to be here in Cappadocia
and in fact we've spent a bit more time here than we would anywhere else because it's just been so lovely.
We're loving it here and thank you Turkey for having us!
What's so lovely is you make friends everywhere in Turkey,
and we've just bumped into a Attila's dad from Attila's cave house,
and he's giving us tips on different hiking trips.
It's just lovely, we feel so adopted by Turkey,
and we've met so many friends,
it's a small world, to see Attila's dad here,
Attila you will know from that when we went for dinner in the cave hotel.
He was explaining that in the distance
right over there, you can see the main volcano here.
And on the one side all year round there's snow,
It is one of the four volcanoes that erupted back in the day to create this wonderful landscape.
There is actually a four km hike that goes all the way around and comes back here.
We're not hiking today, because we're off to the town of Avanos.
But you can see the castle in the background
and Goreme town where we've been staying is just over this hill here.
So we're off to Avanos.
So what was funny is Attila's dad came up to me and asked' do you recognise me ?'
But he had a cap on and his whole face was covered in a maskQ
Oh really, and then he pulled his mask down,
And I said yes! That's one of the problems isn't it, everybody's wearing masks!
Such a lovely family, there you go!
Okay Avanos here we come!
We have arrived in Avanos in this little car park,
and now we just have to figure out how to pay, as there's nobody here to pay.
Masks don't forget your masks!
We've arrived in the town of Avanos and it's located just 8 km North of Goreme!
The river that flows through Avanos is called the Kisilirmak river.
I hope I pronounced that correctly?
It is Turkey's longest river
and it's also known as the Red River.
Walking along in Avanos,
there is a walkway all the way along the river,
it's really nice and people just come down with bread to feed all the ducks
and there's a little island in the middle of the river.
It feels very peaceful for a town.
So we're walking over this little pedestrian suspension bridge
and it's really bouncy!
I love how bouncy this bridge is,
I know it makes you feel like you're at sea or you've been or you've been drinking too much!
We've crossed over the bridge and this area of town definitely seems to be busier,
there's lots of ice cream shops, kebab shops,
and it's got a really nice atmosphere hasn't it?
It really does, I think we might have to find a bit of lunch,
because I've started to feel a bit hungry after all this walking around.
Yeah I'm definitely getting hungry from the smells.
So here in Avanos,
they have all the normal touristy things that you would expect from a town.
From ice creams to souvenir shops.
But one thing Avanos is really famous for is its pottery.
As you can see on the statue behind me,
They've been making pottery here in Avanos from before 2000 BC,
and that is why the river here is also known as the red river, because they get all the clay from the banks of the river.
As we're wandering, we found the gate to old town
and you know that whenever we visit a town or a city we always love to come to the old town.
The real heart of the town!
so we're going to go and have a little look around and maybe find some nice food for lunch.
One thing Avanos is not short of is shops selling pottery,
these are like the cooking pots that we had when Attila cooked us a lovely dinner.
Wow, so as we're walking around we found a little art studio,
with all the wonderful pottery that they make here in this region,
Absolutely beautiful!
It's the only time that I wish I didn't live in a 6m van with no space for things!
This is the the place where we where we prepare the clay,
and we use two or three different clays
Minimum 750 C degrees.
750 C degrees Minimum !
wow look at this!
Look at all these wonderful colours !
This one is very special, the design is from the Hittites civilisation,
They were pagan and had lots of gods,
but the most important one for them was the sun.
That's why they shaped it like a sun,
ah okay.
When they put some wine in it,
when the sun rises, and the sunlight passes through it
they believe the wine is blessed
and they were serving like this,
usually for the kings, oh so they bow!
Oh okay, wow that's amazing!
Does it have a special name?
We call it the Hittites circle or the Hittites jug.
And they've got little ones with wine glasses here,
really beautiful colours.
There's another level,
Wow that's a teaser for the Underground city!
which we're going tomorrow, hopefully !
So don't tell anyone!
Lunch time, this looks nice!
It does look really nice,
it's a really nice little restaurant we found.
Beautiful ..... wow
it's amazing,
so we've ordered kebabs
but the meal always comes with this wonderful bread,
we've got some yogurt and mint dip
this looks like a red cabbage,
I haven't seen that before,
mixed tomato, spicy? a little bit spicy, nice
this one's beautiful we have some jalapenos,
that's spicy ! it's good spicy,
and then we have some parsley,
some lemon
and that's rocket and spinach,
rocket and spinach beautiful and peppery!
there you go delicious!
look at the size of that lamb kebab! that is huge!
What have you got?
I just know that sometimes in life I make good decisions!
and this is a good decision!
look at that! It is just massive!
I love Turkish food,
What is it in the middle?
I think it's yogurt or sour cream,
It's like sour cream, it's lovely
but it's all got herbs on it so it's all flavoursome,
and I got onions, sour cream, tomato, chilli - oh it's all good!
Food time !
that was a very delicious lunch,
and we're just walking back to Trudy along the river,
and all the way along, they've got these wonderful posts
with the local pottery, really nice walk back to the van.
We've left Avanos and we're heading back towards Goreme,
and we're going to visit a castle, you can just see in the distance there.
But it's not an ordinary castle,
it's a little bit special!
Okay so now we just got to find somewhere to park it's busy today,
Beautifully parked my sweetness!
she's a professional driver!
she can even parallel park!
good job.
We have arrived in the town of Uchisar,
and Uchisar, actually means house of memories,
this town is known for its castle, but it's not a castle as you would expect it to look.
It is a castle Cappadocia style and it is built into the hill behind us,
you can just see it in the distance there, so we're going to go and check it out.
The walk up to the castle is wonderful,
all these lovely old stone buildings and really beautiful little narrow lanes.
So we've come up to the top of the hill and it just opens out,
there's a lovely little square here and you can see the castle in front of us,
what an amazing structure,
I bet you've never seen a castle that looks anything quite like that!
So entry into the castle is 15 TL each.
Wow as soon as you walk in you can feel the temperature difference again
and this castle is actually carved out of one of the rocks here in Cappadocia
just look at the lighting here,
amazing they've got all these rooms,
oh mind your step there it's uneven,
you have to let your eyes adjust a little.
Yes you do, let your eyes adjust because it's very bright outside
and already we've just come in to the castle
and it's literally room after room
all beautifully lit,
you can see where the walls have been tooled,
amazing isn't it? what a structure!
The holes in the floor
so this is the way to go up.
Really is a wonderful network of tunnels.
You can imagine the stories, if the walls could talk there would be a story or two!
Just walking down the side of the castle here,
you can see how many different tunnels and things there are
look at this, I've come just off the path a little bit.
How fascinating is it? A really incredible structure.
Look at the shelving system here,
I don't know what that would have been for,
and there's another room there, and the views are starting!
As we get higher up, the views are getting better and better!
Okay, we've made it to the top and just to give you a little quick guide.
Avanos is there,
Love valley where we went this morning is there,
Goreme,
Sunset viewing point, Rose valley, Red valley, Sword valley,
and what a wonderful view from the top of the castle here!
Great place to come and take some photographs,
good place to watch the sunset maybe,
yeah so this castle is the highest point in Cappadocia,
that's why you get these views,
obviously good defence look outpost,
because you can see for miles.
Here in Avanos, they have be making pottery from before ...... something BC
Oh you're still there!
That's it, it is the end of the show.
Thank you very much for watching,
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