Göreme

I write from the small city of Göreme, which is most notable for its underground cities that result from its geological makeup. Apparently, lava flows through the area many millennia ago left the region filled with tufa, which is easy to carve, but hardens when exposed to air - which makes it pretty ideal for carving out caves, of which we have seen approximately 2491. On our visit to the underground city, we descended 198 steps to get down to the seventh level beneath the ground, and another 29 to get down to the eighth, which was a dead-end tunnel, if being underground wasn't inducing enough claustrophobia. Lisa noted that the one flaw to residents' plans to thwart would-be attackers by being unreadable underground was that said attackers could simply block their ventilation shafts, which made us want to leave all the sooner, once we realized how stuffy the caves were beginning to feel...

We stopped also at a pigeon valley, an onyx factory, a monastery also carved from rock, and a cave-castle - by which I mean a tall hill that had been completely carved out to act as a sentry tower, and later a burial place for a few Romans who thought that their elevation would mean a shorter journey to heaven.

Yesterday we walked for ages, through another series of caves and valleys. We had been dropped off with another couple, travellers from New Zealand who are also staying at our hotel, and walked with them for most of the morning and afternoon - which was nice because then no one of us was really responsible for all of our getting lost. After walking all day, a cold beer and a hot shower were just what we needed, so we parted ways with the couple and found our way to a market for beer and bread, and a pastry shop for pistachio baklava and chocolate pudding, all of which we consumed on the rooftop terrace of our hotel, which overlooks the town. Obviously pictures would be really helpful here, but we haven't taken the iPad up to the roof yet, so you'll have to wait for the web album to follow. Our hotel owner chatted us up for a while about problems with tourism for the last decade, and recommended a restaurant for dinner. After we'd freshened up a bit, we were about to set off on our way when we encountered the couple from earlier in the day, who had been given the same recommendation, so we all ate together. The restaurant was called TopDeck, after the bristish tourism company by the same name, for which the chef had done catering before opening his own restaurant. Dinner was by far the best meal we'd yet had, consisting of an array of mezze plates: sigora boregi, eggplant two ways (!!!), salads; and main courses, which were chicken and lamb over rice. We also shared a bottle of local wine. I should mention that the wine was a lot better than what we had tried in Sirince a few days ago.