05:15 Konyaalti
05:45 Departure
1St Day; Breakfast at Akseki, Coffee break at
Seydisehir, Konya Mevlana Museum, Lunch at Konya,
visiting a Kervansaray, checking in to, dining and
overnight at the hotel.
2nd Day; Breakfast, Ürgüp, Pasabag, Devrent Valley,
Three beauties, Yusuf Koç Church and Monastery, Church
of John the Baptists, Çavusin Church, Pigeons valley,
Lunch, Lovers valley, The red valley, Pottery and onyx
workshops, Göreme national Park and Göreme valley,
uçhisar valley, Carpets Cooperative, dining and
overnight at the hotel
3rd Day; Breakfast, The Underground City, Rest at
Aksaray, Lunch and return to hotel(s) at approximately
18:00
CAPPADOCIA
Cappadocia is the historical name of a vast region in
central Anatolia. Today it is used for a much smaller
touristic region. The most attractive aspect of the
region comes from the landscape, the formation of this
landscape and then how it has been utilized by man.
There were many eruptions in the geological times in the
area forming the present landscape, Mount Erciyes
(4000m), Hasandagi (3000m) and a series of other smaller
volcanic mountains. Vast amounts of volcanic tufa (you
may say dust) settled in the area with basalt and the
like hard nucleus. Rain and wind and all the natural
elements of erosion worked it out till today we now have
the extraordinary landscape that some describe it as
another planet. Indeed the color and the shape of the
landscape are breathtaking. All shades of color with
chimney-like spikes spread throughout the region. They
are called ‘Fairy Chimneys’. The juxtaposition of hard
basalt and the soft tufa and the erosion have come up
with these cone shapes and the younger ones still have
their basalt hats on them. When Man came, he started
tooling at it and made houses, churches, underground
cities, storage etc. From this friendly material, he
started living and working, and when time came, defended
himself. The material is soft enough to dig and hard
enough to hold. If you had a pick and a shovel you had a
room, a house or a church or even an underground city,
if you worked at it hard enough. Although there are
traces of all civilizations, we see more of the
Christian era from the first century on being heavily in
use from the 5th c AD through 1923. They have made
churches that are sometimes plain and other times fully
painted with breath-taking frescoes suiting their time
and purpose. At the times of defense, they dug and went
under ground to enable them to live totally underground
for extensive periods of time. People who regularly
lived here have also benefited from this underground
existence. The houses are backed in to the rock rooms
and were cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Now
they are being used as vast underground restaurants,
discos and even hotels built in to the rock by modern
means. A vast area is spread with churches of all shapes,
models and frescoes, underground cities of all sizes,
and of course all shapes that you can think of. The
majority are cone-shapes or chimney shapes. Names like
‘Three Beauties’ are given to groups or single shapes in
the region by the local people. Cappadocia has a lot
more to offer the visitor other than the fairy chimneys
(that kind of steal the show from the others). The
Seljuk and Ottoman mosques, medreses and the
caravanserais are just a few to mention. Caravanserais
were very functional for the trade route east to west.
They were built like castles with some of them being as
big as the castles. They were built on the major routes
about 40 km apart; a days walk for a caravan carrying
goods between great distances. They were well fortified
and well guarded. A foundation was set up by the patron
builder for the maintenance and up keep. Staying at the
caravanserais was free up to three days. All the
requirements of the traders were provided. The bath,
mosque, settle repairs, shoeing the horses, etc. were
available to the guests
Book Now
Price
: ? €
back to daily
Antalya tours
|
