So many rocks
First day in Goreme, arriving early, too early for my hostel bed already to be vacated. Planning a quiet day, the hostel's manager easily convinced me to go on an all-day tour, visiting a whole list of good sites in the area: Pigeon valley, Derinkuyu cave, a whole underground city cut out of the pumice, Ihlara valley, Pasabag and Selime rock monastery, all three a bit of a combination of the buddhist caves in Bamyan, Afghanistan and Meteora in Greece, the Agzikarahan caravanserai and rounding it up with a pottery demonstration in Avanos, a village close to Goreme.
In the evening, two hippy chicks are trying to sing songs in the dining area of the hostel, while playing the guitar they brought.
On the second day, it's off to one of the country's many world heritage sites, the Goreme open air museum, mostly churches cut out of the rock face, but with much better preserved frescoes. Nice, but nowhere near as spectacular as what I imagined the site to be like when I first heard of its existence some 15 years ago.
I came across a large group of older Koreans. A middle aged fair haired, probably Turkish, guide, was guiding them around, speaking Korean in something resembling a walkie-talkie, while all Koreans had an ear bud in one ear.
Dinner at a local restaurant with live music, before downing tea and sweets at a cake and coffee house where one of the Chinese? Korean? waitresses was getting private Turkish lessons.
In the afternoon, chatting with a friendly Brit with yellowed teeth, who's operating a small cafe, the indoor area inside one of the rocks dotting the plains, close to open air museum.