Once in a lifetime

On our last weekend in Capaddocia Turkey we visited an open air museum in Goreme.

We were able to walk through many of the caves to see where the earlier Christian settlers cooked their food, dinned, slept and prayed.  There were tons of churches with altars carved into the caves and left over paintings of Bible scripture.  Up above in the last photo you can make out a church at the top of the staircase with red painting on the outside of several symbols and Jesus with his disciples.

Many of the churches had a guard standing out front that followed you in to make sure you were photographing the inside.

No one was watching when I took this one shhhhh

But Jason somehow managed to film a little in this beautiful church without getting caught

Check out the entrance to one of the churches floors. Looks like they may have been graves. The grates were placed to prevent people from falling in.

Next to the church was a big room that was completely black assumed to have been the kitchen.
Another room had this long table with a bench carved out, I could just imagine them all eating together here.

Our guide said that as many as 3,000 people would live in these underground cities and wouldn't come out for 6 months at a time.

Here are some more photos from the museum.

 Camels and Donkeys!!

  After an incredible day at the museum we headed straight for the ATV rentals to hit all those awesome dirt roads in Goreme's canyons.  This had to be one of the most amazing things I've done in my life, I LOVED it!!!!!! Here's what we saw and I included a small clip just so you could see the background. We road all day till the sun went down. A MAZE ING!!!

Life is good my friends!!!!

xoxoxox

The Tour Continues

Turkey had so many wonderful attractions to see we kept ourselves pretty busy on the weekends.  Pushing strollers up steep cobblestone hills and carrying sleeping toddlers through five story caves underground; we've managed to become quite the exploring family.

Thankfully we've had another family to share it with, you know that other couple whose child take turns throwing tantrums after yours is through?  It's nice to be able to give each other the nod that says yes I feel for you.  We can look out for each other when one child leaves a jacket behind when you weren't paying attention or waits patiently as you try to convince your child to put the jacket on in the first place.

Hunter and Harlow are almost like brother and sister now.

Behind them are several hotels that have been built right into the caves, many parts of Cappadocia offer caves hotel accommodations but sadly ours wasn't one of them.

Speaking of caves remember that underground city we visited?  Well here's the market right in front of the entrance to it, poor Jason, Harlow fell asleep right before we entered so he had to carry her through the entire thing.

Poor guy was climbing through these tiny tunnels to get to each level and every room with a 25 pounds dead weight baby.

Here's one of the doors the early Christians made to hide from intruders, the hole in the middle was used to spear bad guys trying to get them.  They were huge and probably took a couple strong men to roll them.

See the red arrow there?  The whole city had blue arrows and red to show you where to go and where not to go thankfully because everything starts to look the same and you could easily get lost five stories below.

The further we went down the more I started to freak out a little, like we were going to get stuck down there or something.  Or maybe some ancient half man, half creature was going to shut the lights out and eat us, what?  Thanks for all the horror movies Mom!

But yes we made it back to the the top alive!  

Here's a picture of Pigeon Valley a little after the snow began to fall, it was absolutely beautiful.  

Check out the homes behind Harlow still using the caves.

 Family dinner out one night

Harlow and I can't travel anywhere without finding an animal that we want to bring home with us.  This guy was giant sweetheart that followed Harlow everywhere.

I could just see our little dogs riding around on this guys back.  But Jason has made it clear "No more dogs Michelle, when it comes to animals your heart is bigger then your brain."  

There's still time to get him to change his mind though :)

Cappadocia Turkey

Unfortunately it has been impossible to get an internet signal in Turkey, granted we've been in the middle of nowhere but it really has thrown a wrench in my blogging plans.

I still have SO much to describe and post about Berlin, but Turkey has just been so fascinating I can't help but update you on that first.

We spent almost two weeks exploring this ancient town.

I learned towards the end of the trip that Cappadocia is listed in several books as a "must see before you die" city.

In prehistoric periods the first humans constructed tunnels of underground cities in the volcanic rock formations.  All throughout the land you can see these tunnels/caves that have been carved out and visit the underground cities.  Apparently the first Christians escaped Roman prosecution in these caves so there are over 300 churches throughout making it a scared Bible land for many Christian tourists.

We've had terrible luck with all our electronic devices on this trip so either we've lost chargers or broken cameras so we've missed out on some incredible photos, but other people in our group had cameras so hopefully I can still share most of it.

Jason's first weekend off, a bunch of us rented a bus and they took us on a tour to view some of the most famous attractions.  During the week while he worked there wasn't much for us to do since pushing a stroller up these monster hills was giving me a serious backache.  And it wasn't like I was going to explore the dark caves with Harlow by myself, I've seen way to many horror films to do anything like that.

Harlow on the bus

Me checking out the rock forms

 The call this one
The Camel

The Penguins, can you see it?

Behind Jason and Harlow to the left is Napoleon's hat.

Jason embracing the culture

Harlow and Hunter

By the little shop up top we climbed up into another little church

The Church

 View from the tiny church

Me and Maria, Hunter's mama and my saving grace :)

We visited Avanos a city known for it's handmade pottery.  They showed us how they make everything and we were able to take a tour and watch the ladies paint these crazy patterns by hand without a stencil.

Check out this guy sort the clay with his bare hands.

This guy used a foot wheel to make a sugar pot, the legend is you spin the top first then the pot if the top fits you will be married, if not you won't.

We went to one of the many underground cities that was 5 stories under the ground, my camera died but I was able to use someone elses, I just haven't put them on my computer yet, so next post.

For lunch we enjoyed the well known pottery kebobs.  They cook the meat in pottery and use a ball of dough to close off the top, when it's ready to eat they break it open with the blunt side of a big knife.  Delicious!!!!

Watch Jason break it open.