Fairy Chimneys and Eternal Flames

Ahhh Turkey - either the stupidest bird alive, or one of the more exciting countries you could hope to visit. Shannon and I just finished up 9 days in Turkey, and I don't think we'll find much in Europe that will be as unusual as it was. It might not even be that it was all that amazing, but just that I didn't really expect much to come out of it, thinking it was going to be just another European stop with a lot of churches, historical sites and people trying to sell you stuff at drastically inflated tourist prices, often with a gut-wrenching sob story thrown in for free. Well, I suppose it was all that, but the places we stopped at along the way certainly had a lot more.

Istanbul was the first stop, and it was OK, but nothing super special. If you're into mosques, kebabs, or moustaches, then this is the place for you. We only stayed one night though, and spent more time organizing our way out of town than doing anything in it. Well, we did check out one mosque, but that took all of 15 minutes. Rather short compared to the 2 hours watching a Julia Roberts/Clive Owen movie while waiting for our bus out of town.

We took off to Cappadocia (or Kappadokya, however you want to spell it). We weren't sure where we wanted to go to at first, so we based it largely on the posters placed all over the tour agency walls we walked by. The options seemed to be between mosques, beaches, some kind of pancake waterfall bathing town, and the mushroom rocks chalk-full of caves. We chose the caves, and didn't regret it. Cappadicia was apparently home to some pretty intense volcanic activity several million years ago, and as things settled down, it left these bizarre mushroom pillars of rock throughout the region. Plus, it's all this really soft limestone rock, so the troglodytes back in the day used to make all sorts of cave dwellings and even underground cities in the soft crumbly rock. We walked for hours through valleys where the walls would be lined for kilometers with holes, windows and caves people used to live in (and sometimes still do).

We sadly chose the wrong hostel when getting to Cappadocia, and I cannot say I spent the night in a cave, but most places there have built their hotels and guesthouses right into the cliff walls, so getting a "cave room" is generally an easy thing to do, and something I hope anyone who makes it there will do themselves. We did manage to see a Whirling Dervish dance though, which is a strange Turkish religious dance, involving spinning on your left foot, one hand up to heaven, one hand down to earth. It sounds a little silly, but the show they put on was, cliche as it sounds, hypnotic. They don't even serve alcohol during it, as it's taken quite seriously by the Turks.

Following Cappadocia, we went to Olympos. Don't confuse this with Olympus in Greece, because then you'd be in Greece, and not Turkey. Olympos is one of the more unusual ruin sites I've ever seen, since there's very little done to any of them - they've been literally left right in the bush just as they were found. A few dirt paths have been cleared, and some moderately informative signage has been put up, but otherwise it feels like you're the first person to stumble onto these old Roman ruins ever. There's small water systems they build, an amphitheatre, some housing, ir's all quite impressively intact, yet still mostly overgrown and left just sitting there on the side of the path. Anyway, if you get sick and tired of ruins, you can just keep on walking down the path till you hit the beach.

Oh, running out of time here, so I gotta run. One other cool thing about Olympos - the fire. There's a small mountain that spurts out fire from its cracks. Strange. Anyway, in Transylvania now, but whao, no time. Bye!