So, the trip that wasn’t supposed to be continues.

My original idea had been to just make a short 4-day detour to Istanbul, before returning to Bulgaria to continue with my plan towards financial solvency by utilising their cheap prices and fast internet speeds.

Instead I have ended up travelling through Turkey.

After Istanbul I got a flight to Cappadocia. Flights inside Turkey are often very reasonable (I paid £25 for this one and saved myself an 11-hour bus journey).

Cappadocia is this area in the centre of Turkey with amazing rock formations. I have seen photos of it before and always thought they were faked; apparently not.

Plenty of places in the world have unusual rock formations: Utah, or example, or Shalin in China. The difference with Cappadocia is that people lived in the rocks for thousands of years and continued right up until the 1970s.

I stayed in Göreme, which is pretty much in the centre of the region. Göreme is a small town; it’s not party central if that’s what you’re looking for but suited me just fine. There are rows and rows of travel ‘specialists’ selling balloon rides and excursions. There are also rows of ‘souvenir shops’ (jewellery, carpets, fridge magnets, ‘evil eyes’) and no shortage of restaurants.

View over Goreme at sunrise

Hotels in Göreme suit virtually every budget.  The top hotel costs €2,000 a night.  One of its amenities (apart from an awesome view) is that wine is literally ‘on tap’; you could, if you chose, bathe in it.  There are also a few hostels, where you can get a dorm bed for around €6.  I opted for somewhere in between those two (but, let’s face it, a lot near to the bottom end).

I paid a little extraa to stay in a cave rather than a standard room.

My cave room: great for a few days but it gets very humid in there.  Someone was telling me how he lived in a cave like this for six months and had to throw out all of his electronics afterwards, because of the damp.

The main thing people like to do in Cappadocia is to take an early morning balloon ride. I wasn’t going to do it, because I thought it was expensive (around €100 mark normally) but I’m so glad I did. If I had a bucket list then this would be on it (meaning I could now cross it off).

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They call this love valley 🙂

As well as hiking amongst the rocks you can also visit cave churches, vast underground towns and deserted cave villages.

Unfortunately, because many of the tour groups are feeding onto the same itinerary some of the attractions get a little crowded.

Another thing you can do is try your hand at pottery.  I’ll leave you to guess which of these efforts is mine and which was done by the ‘master’.  Of course the main purpose of this was to sell you ceramics; there were some nice pieces but very expensive.