Back to Turkey, another fun trip concludes

Upon dragging ourselves away from Hydra, it was back to our favorite port/ghetto for an interesting bus ride through Athens to the airport.  As previously mentioned, Athens is not very interesting, so back to the greatest city in the world: Istanbul!

Seriously!  How could you not love this place!

We had a short stopover in Istanbul on our way to Cappadocia, so we decided to make the most of it with (drum roll...) a food tour!

Soooo many sweets!

 If you're thinking this is right up our alley, you know us very well!  Walk all over Istanbul and be introduced to new and exciting foods all day?  Yes, please!

This is breakfast...hmmmmm

 We signed up for the tour and showed up at the assigned place to discover our guide was the only one joining us - private tour!  We started out on the Europe side, had a delicious breakfast, then took a boat to the Asia side of Istanbul.  At every stop the vendors told us with pride about their business and the dishes they loved to serve.  Our guide had grown up around Cappadocia in a rural town, and told us all sorts of interesting things about life in Turkey.  It was awesome having a private Turkish guide, we were able to talk to him and ask him about anything and everything we could think of - and I did!

Pickled everything!

More delicious candy!

 It was a great opportunity to really better understand Turkish life.  He told us a lot of interesting things, such as the fact that the average Turk eats three times his body weight in bread every year.  That means I would have to average an entire loaf of bread every day - wow.  Also growing up no one had much food and once his mom saw him take a bite of cheese and immediately scolded him: "the only reason we have cheese is to help us eat more bread!"  In addition to lots of awesome traditional foods, it was cool to see the Asian side of Istanbul, which is where most Turks can afford to live and commute across the Bosphorus strait every day to work.  It was so interesting to see the more workaday part of Istanbul and get away from the touristy areas!

And included this lovely alley sheltered by hanging umbrellas!

Also it had a completely modern vibe and we noticed almost none of the women were wearing head scarves or coverings.  All told our food tour was incredible and we ended up eating at 9 different venues over 7 hours - a lot of food!  Our first food tour, but not our last, a great way to get involved with the food, culture, and people of the city.

Following our awesome day of gluttony we were off to a place of wonder we'd wanted to visit since before our first trip abroad - Cappadocia!

This entire thing is an open air museum!

How do you even begin to describe Cappadocia?  It's an entire region full of incredible rock formations, cave dwellings that date back thousands of years, and history.  The best part is that it's all there in the open, just waiting to be explored.  And explore we did!

 Stone castles!

There were tunnels all through this building(?), just waiting to be explored

People lived in these until the 1950's!

 The entire region of Cappadocia is sandstone and over time people have dug entire houses and cities into the rock to avoid marauding armies that frequently passed through central Turkey on the way to Europe/Asia/Holy Land basically Turkey is on the way to anywhere.  We spent our first day seeing as much of this amazingness as possible.  Additionally, early Christians had inhabited the region and their caves/chapels contained original early christian art, in their original settings.  Unfortunately 1,800 year-old art inside a cave is difficult to photograph, but it was really neat.

Cappadocia did not disappoint, and it was an incredible day, ending up with viewing an amazing sunset at a beautiful spot.

Aren't we cute?

Fine place to watch a sunset!

 The main touristy thing to do is take a hot air balloon ride amongst the formations at sunrise.  But since we ballooned last year for my birthday we decided to forego the ballooning and just watch them instead.  Wow.

Right?!  This was 2 minutes from our hotel.

 Getting up early in the morning is not our favorite thing, but we thought this would be worth it and it was.  With our mouths agape we drove in the morning light to the top of the bluff where we watched the sunset.  Dozens of balloons filled the sky, each reflecting the sunrise.  As we watched, they filled the canyons below us and got closer and closer, eventually passing over our heads.  Some of them were so close we could hear the pilots talking to the passengers and it seemed we could reach up and touch them!

Turn...around...very...slowly.  There's one right behind you!  Lookout!

How'd you get in there?

 The first bunch passed over, but then tons of trucks with trailers started showing up on the road we'd parked on.  We were in the middle of the landing zone, and they started dropping all around us!  The skill of the pilots was amazing, some of them were able to land the baskets right on the trailers.

A little to the leffffftttt...and down!

In addition to carving out the natural formations, cities on the plains would dig down into the rock below and retreat downwards when armies passed through.  With our second day we went to visit one of these underground cities.  The one we went to reached a maximum depth of 85 meters (280 ft!).  They had all sorts of defenses, rooms for storage, chapels, everything a village would need to wait out an army.  It was a truly remarkable creation.

Down we go!

Shaft for ventilation.  Ever wondered what a 280 ft deep hole looks like? Voila!

Dug out with hammer and chisel!

A bit cramped, naturally.  And not just because we just did a food tour!

After that we drove around exploring the region, finding amazingness at every turn.  It was a full day of exploring, history, and delightful Turkish people and food.  At the end of it we were exhausted and satisfied and completely vacationed out.  Good thing we had a hand chiseled cave hotel to return to!

Vacation over!  Now for our short 26 hour trip home!

We loved every bit of our trip and it was a great opportunity to see Greece and more of Turkey.  We'd love to return to see more, but the world is big and we have so much to see.  We're getting there!

Adventures in Greece Continued

Our path through Greece went as follows: Rhodes - Crete - Santorini - Naxos - Hydra. Our guidebook was very helpful in narrowing down which islands to hop to. They are all so different from the next.

Santorini = Awesome Views/Romantic/Luxury

Naxos = History/Beaches/Family Friendly

Hydra = No Cars/Relaxation

After our Medieval stop in Rhodes, our next stop was Crete which was HUGE. It is the largest Greek island and once we got there we realized we would need to come back and visit Crete all by itself. So we only visited one city and saw the old town, the museum, and some ruins.

Venetian building, now city hall, in old town

The ruins we went to see were the Palace of Knossos, which was the place where King Minos had the Minotaur that was trapped in the Labyrinth, from Greek Mythology. It was interesting because the information placards only referenced Greek Mythology. I still don't know who actually lived there, if it was an actual king from history, or what was going on at the time or anything. The mythology seemed to be the history.
Also, the ruins were discovered by a rich British guy in the early 1900's and then "restored" to how he thought they should look, so it was a weird mix of old and new.

Partially restored Queen's Room and Throne Room

And on Crete we had some of the best gyros I've ever had:

Drool...

Next up was Santorini. The place you think of when you think of Greece: blue-domed churches and white washed buildings. I had over 200 pictures from Santorini ALONE, so stand back

Lookit!!

 

Right?! Are you looking up plane tickets right now?

One of the highlights was that you could walk from village to village across the top of that cliffside. Streets were narrow and because this is a cruise port, they were also PACKED with people, even though it was later in the summer; we were there in September. Taking this nice picturesque stroll was so beautiful.

Oh yes, and the donkeys

In case you don't want to take the stairs from down here, to up there!
But there was also a bus, which was the option we chose.

The other best part of Santorini was the sunsets. The island is famous for them and everyone comes out to watch and cheer as the sun goes down. Did not disappoint!

This sunset gyro also did not disappoint

The other, other best part of Santorini was the place we found to stay. A private villa with a private pool for a steal of a deal! Most afternoons were spent here relaxing and it. was. awesome.

View from the balcony. Yowza!

After being in the crazy crowds and heat, we were ready for some chilled-out beach time.  Our next stop was Naxos, which was so perfect. Small beach bum towns, good food, good beaches, and as a bonus: free cake with every dinner!  Naturally we loved it!

View from the ferry pier. There's a castle up on the hill

This was the bus stop near our hotel. So chill

This island had a castle and some old 9th-10th century churches. With some original Byzantine artwork still inside them. No biggie. We rented ourselves a scooter and took a tour of the island, stopping at roadside churches and little towns.

This lady took us all around the church, speaking full-on Greek, telling us all about it (I assume)
I just kept nodding and smiling

Freaking old Byzantine art

View of the island from the roadside

Exploring the narrow streets of the castle and fort

View of the port from the castle

A Greek temple (of Apollo I think?) that was never finished

And for the sake of consistency: a picture of food

Calamari and crab cakes. And the ever-present orange Fanta

We got to the end of our stay on Naxos and decided to stay one more day. We arranged it with our hotel with no problem, and found out the next day that there had actually been a ferry strike going on for 3 days, so we wouldn't have been able to leave on the original day anyway. Ferry strikes are common and they announce them beforehand - although we were clueless.

After Naxos we were headed to Hydra, and had to go through the Athens port to change ferries. Because of the strike, the ferries were packed and ours ended up getting in 2 hours late, which made us miss our connection. Our guidebook helpfully pointed out that the Athens port town had the highest crime rate and whatever you do, for the love of all that is holy, do NOT sleep outside. Walking past several homeless people and beggars we found that the ticket offices were closed and we had to come back in the morning to sort out our ticket. Thankfully our phones had free data so I hopped online and found a fancy overpriced hotel only a couple blocks away. Yes please. 

The next morning we were successfully able to transfer our tickets to a ferry for that morning. So it all worked out well and we didn't have to sleep outside in the gutter. On to Hydra!

There are no cars on Hydra so it was a very small and charming place. They had some donkeys at the pier that local people used to haul supplies up the steep streets to their homes.

Cookies from heaven!

We took a hike up to the top of the hill to a church (which was closed) and a monastery (which was also closed) but of course had beautiful views

From the top. What a view!

The next day we checked out the deserted pebble beaches and ate lots of good food

Can't go wrong with seafood risotto

We had our last meal in Greece at a restaurant overlooking the sunset (the restaurant was appropriately and uncreatively called "Sunset"). This is one of the most beautiful places we have ever been!