Mediterranean Iconic Shores Ocean Cruise

Day 3: Saturday, November 01, 2025 - Istanbul, travel, and Cappadocia, Turkey

The day's statistics:
-  Weather: low 60s
-  Steps: 10,382 Linda; 11,187 Steve
-  Miles traveled (approximately): 1,150

Today was another day of travel. Three days, three flights. It could be worse...
Today we were flying from Istanbul to Cappadocia.
As we were leaving the the room, I happened to notice this cluster of switches by the door. At least they were labeled unlike what we've had in other hotels.

We arose at 4:45 as we had to be in the lobby for an early departure - 5:30 early - and it was so early that the hotel's restaurant wasn't even open yet. But they did provide us with breakfasts to go. (I didn't get any pictures - it WAS early). The box consisted of a ham [maybe], cheese, and lettuce sandwich; a piece of fruit; a juice; cheese and crackers; a granola bar; and a bottle of water. Perhaps there was even something else.
At 6:00, we boarded bus three and headed to the airport with our luggage.
We arrived, and headed to the check-in kiosks. Our flight was on-time: so far, so good.

and our guide Evren assisted everyone with checking in our baggage.
We made our way to the gate to await boarding.
"Here comes the sun, do do do do"

We were called to start boarding at 8:40. We exited the terminal, and headed to the tarmac to board. There were portable staircases at both ends of the plane.

We had the two seats - with the help of Evren - in the last row (a good thing), so we sat alone and didn't have to deal with anyone else on the aisle.
Unfortunately, the last few overhead bins are used for the crew, so we couldn't have our luggage near us - we had to put it about eight and twelve rows forward. That was great for now, but let's see how deplaning goes...
We were sitting by 8:53, and the plane started moving ten minutes later.
But then we sat for a half-hour...
There was a fog over the city when we took off. And we saw some other interesting sights during the flight too.








Merely a half-hour or so into the flight we were served a warm sandwich. It was cheese, tomato, and olive tapinad on a warm artisian role. It was very good. And included - British Air could learn from this Turkish airline...

After our yummy snack, we had a couple more interesting landscape sights before landing at 10:22.


Half the passengers exited out the back while the other half exited out the front. I had to jump forward row by row as passengers went by in order to get to our carry-ons. I thought it would have been a little faster to do that than to just wait for everyone to deplane.
We made our way into the terminal and found that the baggage carrousel was adjacent to the door. Like, right there (that's the terminal entry door in the background).

At 10:55 we collected our luggage. Before leaving the terminal, we hit the restrooms. I don't normally comment on bathrooms much, but in this case, I had to. The men's room had two stalls. One stall had the traditional toilet, but the other... had a hole in the floor.

After everyone gathered their luggage and used the facilities, we made our way to the buses and headed out.
Without regard to airspace, being in Cappadocia meant that we were now on the third continent we've ever visited - and the third in as many days too.

For what one would expect to be a very arid region, there was quite a bit of evergreen trees.

We had a half-hour drive our first stop, the Özkonak Underground City.
On the way, Evren told us about his country.
Turkey produces 70% of the world's hazelnuts. Pistachios are another key product of the country.
One-fifth of the country's population lives in Istanbul. The mountains to the north and south keep the center of the country arid. The westcoast of the country, near the Aegean Sea, has a climate a lot like California. The west is far more developed than the east too.
We saw some interesting sights, and some landscapes.
There were some caves cut into the rocks, as well as one spot that had a large number of alcoves cut into it for pigeon homes so that farmers could gather the bird droppings to use for manure.







In the parking lot at the site were a pony (for kids' rides) and a camel (for adults' rides).


This site, as with a number of other that Viking takes us to, is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The site had an underground city. We didn't see it all.
The story is that the cities were built underground to protect the inhabitants. A large stone could be rolled in front of the entryway and the residence could be protected from any intruders / attackers.
This particular site was four or five stories, and could house about two-thousand residents - the largest can hold as many as thirty-thousand.


We entered via a narrow entryway, and down a short flight of stairs.
There were quite a few different rooms that we saw, including a sleeping room, temple, wine making room, kitchen area, and even a gathering room. There was one passageway that even Linda - at five-foot-two - had to duck.













In the last room we were given the option of going down a short - in height (and shorter than the passageway above), not-too-long, and narrow hallway to another room - but we elected not to try. Otherwise, here are the rooms we visited - keeping in mind that they were cut with rudamentary tools.
After we emerged from the city, we were in a small plaza - with a restaurant and a small souvenir store - that overlooked a portion of the countrside.

At the end of the plaza was a tree with some souvenirs hanging on it that included hot air balloons, and glass evil-eyes. The story with the evil-eyes is that you don't buy them for yourself, but rather you buy it to give to someone as a sign of good luck.

We also took a selfie near the above tree - though the phone focused more on us and didn't really include the tree.

There was also a call to prayer taking place. Now there are speakers to help with the call, but in the past, the call was made with just human voices.

Next on our agenda was lunch.
We departed the underground city area, and headed toward the Noss Group restaurant.
On the way, we passed a few interesting sites including cemetery that had a burial ceremony in progress, a quarry, the Kizilimak River, a brick factory, some fairy chimneys, and some other sights.













We spied a gas station that had gas for 57.46₺ (Turkish Lira) or $1.35 per liter. There are 3.78 liters to a US gallon, so that is $5.03 per gallon. Much higher than the US, but lower than some other European countries. Perhaps their proximity to the oil producers means slightly less expensive gas...

We arrived at the restaurant and headed inside.
Though there was a buffet offered for most guests, we were brought into a larger seating room for a fixed menu meal. We sat with Clair and Ernie from Australia, and Randy and Janice from South Carolina.
When we arrived at the table there were salads, and grilled eggplant with pepper servings for everyone, which was followed by a cream-based soup and a pastry of some kind (partially eaten below).




The highlight of the meal was a stew dish. It is cooked in a large pottery vase with a dough on top. The fire is extinguished, the contents poured into a large bowl, and then served.


The last course - finally - was a semalina dough thingy with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

There were some nice architectural designs and artifacts around too.

Our next destination was to Love Valley to the Fairy Chimneys.
But first, we had to get there...
In addition to the nine-thousand foot tall volcano shrouded in fog, we saw some other interesting formations and sights.







We arrived at the UNESCO site, and made our way in.

A brief explanation of what a Fairy Chimney is is required. Unique to the Cappadicia area, these are old lava vents that erupted, with a harder stone on top - creating a mushroom looking result.
In the case of this park that had a large number of these fairy chimneys. Some of these chimneys were cut into in order to "repurpose" them.
Admittedly, these fairy chimneys had a resemlence to the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon NP in the US.
At the beginning of the collection was an office, and next to it was a small church with a small temple.



After an initially short guided tour, we were set free for a little in order to view what we wanted.















From a short distance, on the way out, I was able to capture the office.

We perused the gift shop, and then headed to the parking lot and the bus, passing some additional shops along the roadway.
After everyone boarded, we headed out.



We were heading to our hotel, but still had about a half-hour drive to the hotel.

The hotel was in a rocky, hilly area that was riddled with a number of large cave dwellings.


The buses parked in front, on the main street.


We had to climb a rough road to get to the reception area. Or we could ride in the small shuttle bus instead. We chose the latter. It was a couple minute drive to the lobby area.

After arriving at the top, we entered the lobby and were served a glass of wine.
Evren handed out our room keys, and we headed outside to identify our luggage. We were then brouoght to our room by a housekeeper.
The room was well appointed and even had two beds - though the one on the upper level was more for a child.
The only... danger we felt was present was that the floor was polished marble, and the sleeping area and bathroom were in an area down two steps.


I used the translation app on the phone to say "thank you" to our housekeeper in her native langage - "teşekkürler".

Shortly after relaxing a little, our luggage arrived.
We got ourselves organized a little, and before long it was time to head to the hotel restaurant for dinner.
Our room was on the second floor. We traversed the stairs, and at the base, we saw - to the right - a nifty little secluded sitting area.

There was a nice fountain with a bridge over the waterway in front of the restaurant.
We went inside and found Randy and Janice sitting at the first table on the left. We joined them.
Our meal was three courses consisting of a pumpkin soup, a salad, and a stew with roasted pepper and fries.



I didn't get a picture of the fig dessert - but that was because our table didn't get any. But that was actually okay because we were all pretty full from the tasty dinner.
After eating and chatting, we headed back to our room.
We saw the interesting lighting of the caves, that Linda captured on her phone. Then after we got to the room, I grabbed the camera and headed out into the courtyard for a couple more.




We relaxed a bit catching up on our daily phone games, and then washed up, and went to bed as we were dragging our wagon having gotten up so early this morning for our departure.

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