Delicious food in Goreme

While we were in Cappadocia we visited the Old Cappadocia Restaurant in Goreme for an evening meal.  We were tired after a long day and we came across the restaurant on the main street.  The menu looked inviting.

I had heard about the wine from the Cappadocia region, so of course I had to give it a go, so I ordered a glass of white, and it was delicious, probably the best wine I have tasted during all of my visits to Turkey.

I ordered the Testi Kebab or Pottery Kebab, as this was a local dish I had seen and wanted to give it a try.

The waiter brought us some local 'flat' bread, and a small dish of oil and one of black pepper, and told us to dip the bread into the oil and then the pepper.  It was really good.

Then the Testi Kebab arrived, it was served in a clay pot and arrived at the table on fire.

And if that wasn't dramatic enough the waiter brought a hammer, and broke open the pot.  Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of this as the fire, hammer and flying pottery was making me a little bit nervous, but once the top of the pot had been removed it revealed this:

Once the flames had died down, I was able to taste the meal, the taste lived up to the drama.  It was a delicious casserole of chicken with vegetables in a tasty sauce, served with rice.

After another glass of wine we headed back to the hotel.

At the Market

One of the many great things about Turkey is the fresh fruit and vegetables, and its always an adventure to visit the local market every Friday for my supplies for the week, something I look forward to.

The stallholders are always welcoming, and try to teach me a little Turkish on each visit, and we always somehow manage to have a laugh and joke, usually because we can't understand each other!

The stalls always look colourful with all the different fruit and vegetables, sometimes when I don't know what something is they offer a piece for me to try, and see if I know what it is.  Usually it doesn't help me much, but its always nice to try something new.

Always ready with a smile 

Always ready with a smile 

Cappadocia

As it gets closer to the end of my time here in Ankara, there are still a few places I want to visit, and Cappadocia was at the top of my list!  I was lucky enough to visit there last week and it truly is a stunning place.  I was very surprised to hear from the guide that there are not many visitors there from the UK!

Cappadocia is about 4 hours away from Ankara on the bus, and we took the bus to the town of Goreme at 1.30 am, which meant we arrived at 5.30am in time for the sunrise.  The area was busy even at that time of the morning, as there are many hot air balloon companies which take tourists to see sunrise.  Unfortunately this was too expensive for us teachers, so we watched the balloons from a nearby vantage point.

It was a fantastic sight, and obviously big business for the companies in Cappadocia.  The busy tourist season is April, May and September, October.  The summer is too hot for tourists to explore the area.  We then walked down to our hotel to see if we could check in, and we were in luck.  We checked into our cave room at www.http://cappadociaufukpension.com/ which was clean and comfortable, and went in the search for some breakfast.

We were all starting to run out of steam, as we had travelled overnight straight after work, so a strong coffee was in order, along with menemen (scrambled eggs with tomato and green pepper).  After breakfast we went on a search for a tour and found one that was leaving at 9.30am that was visiting Derinkuyu underground city (which is the deepest of the 36 underground cities in Cappadocia), Ihlara Valley and Selime Monastery, along with a couple of other photo opportunity stops.  I am not a fan of tours, I prefer to find my own way around and go to places I want to go to, so I found the day very restrictive, but we met some interesting people and got to see some great places.

The evening was spent having a relaxing meal, and drink Cappadocia wine, which was probably the nicest wine I have found so far in Turkey, but the meal will be a separate blog!

After our night in the cave room, we had a typical Turkish breakfast in the hotel, and walked up to the Goreme Open Air Museum.

Soon after it was time to say goodbye to Cappadocia, and I hope to visit again.  There is so much to see and do and two days are definitely not enough!