The Fairy Chimneys of Cappodocia

9.28.12
After dinner last night Tom's and I smoked another Nargile. Tom loved it but the novelty was what made it fun the first time for me. After dinner it was straight home to bed because we had a 5:15 am date with a balloon. That's getting on the shuttle time, not wake up time. That was 4:30.

We shared a small 8 passenger balloon with 5 other people. This was An awesome set up thanks to Yasin, our hotelier. 95 balloons took off with us this morning and almost all of them were large baskets with 30+ people in them. I don't know how you would ever get close to the edge to take a picture or enjoy the peacefulness of the experience. Our pilot was excellent and our landing was perfect, unlike the time we ballooned at home where it was windy and that made for a crazy landing. The entire crowd of balloons was like a well orchestrated dance with balloons trading places flying high and low. It was such a cool view when a balloon in front of us dipped down and we flew directly over the top of it. It looked like a gigantic jelly fish. I have to admit I was a little worried that it would suddenly pop right up and bump the bottom of our balloon, sending us careening into space!

After ballooning we returned to our hotel and had breakfast while deciding on our next adventure. We had tossed around the idea of renting a scooter and that's what we decided on. We followed one of of the suggested routes here to see all of the different types of Fairy Chimneys. At times we were surrounded by tour buses, however many times we had a place almost to ourselves and we had the bonus of being able to come and go as we chose. We saw (and photographed!) some amazing works of nature. We enjoyed lunch at a really cute Turkish styled restaurant that gave me the desire to open a trendy coffee house where people could smoke Nargiles and lounge around on big cushions and drink their Turkish coffee (Tom's new love!) off of low tables.

We are back at the hotel for an hour of R &R before we heads it on the scooter to a high point in town to catch the sunset. We discovered it just a bit too late last night. After dinner it will be another early night after the early wake up call this morning and the busy day.Tomorrow we have a tour scheduled to see some underground cities too difficult to reach without a rental car. We have to check out of our hotel and leave our bags so we will be ready for our overnight bus tomorrow night. We are headed for Pamukkale (southern Turkey) and an adventure I have been especially looking forward to since I heard about it. That's a secret I'll save for later.