A lot of hot air

We’re now in Turkey, which feels very strange when you look at it on a map, as we’re so close to home. The first stop in Turkey is Cappadocia, known for its many hot air balloons.

We arrived late on Saturday evening, after taking five flights to get here. I was absolutely desperate for sleep so went straight to bed when we arrived at the hostel, sleeping a solid 12 hours.

I didn’t expect to do much the first day here, more just a bit of exploring and figuring out what to do for the rest of the time here. It turned out to be very hot too, maybe something to do with this European heatwave that’s going on.

I did manage to go to the open air museum though, which is a collection of settlements built into the rock (there’s lots of that around here).

The following day was a very early start, we were going in a hot air balloon! It was a very cool experience, seeing the sunrise as you bob up and down for an hour.

With the entire day still ahead of us, we went for a hike through the Pigeon and Love valleys. The Pigeon valley is named due to its large population of pigeons, and Love valley due to the volume of people that get engaged there. I actually saw two proposals from the balloon.

For the next day, we went on what is known as the green tour. The tours around here are all colour coded, taking you to various sights around the area. We went to view more settlements in rocks, went to another valley, and went to an underground city, which they have many of in the area.