Göreme

I got to Göreme last Sunday night early in the evening.  Although Göreme is always swarming with tourists, and at least half the people you will run into if you go anywhere are tourists, I still love it and I highly recommend it.  It's a very laid back place.  You can get a very nice hotel room, possibly even one in a cave, for about 75TL breakfast included.  Prices for food run a little bit more than average for Turkey, and with one notable exception the quality is pretty average, but there are much better things to than eat in and around Göreme.

Neither of the two hotels that I had emailed before about booking a room had responded.  So the first thing I did on arrival was to go to a cafe that had internet, order a tea, and get in the internet.  I cached a map of the area on my iPhone and looked up places on my computer.  I went to the first place on my list, the Travelers Cave Pension, and they had a nice room but only for two nights (I was staying three).  So I took it.  The next day I went and found a room for the third night at the Chelebi Cave Hotel which was only slightly more per night, but both the breakfast and the room were much nicer.

At breakfast at the first place I stayed.

At breakfast at the first place I stayed.

In the center of town.

The bus station.

In the center of town

They get lots of Asian visitors.

I've been to Göreme twice before, and both times I went to the Göreme Open Air Museum.  This time I decided to skip the Open Air Museum and just take walks in the countryside around Göreme.  The first day after arriving I walked up toward the Open Air Museum, not far, maybe 1km, and just started following trails among the hoodoos.

Outside a pottery workshop

Aliens outside a pottery workshop

Outside the pottery workshop

The next day, I took a walk to another village, Çavuşin, which is about 3km away from Göreme.  They have a few hotels there but it's far less touristy than Göreme.  I think I would rather stay in Göreme than in Çavuşin though.

The Travelers Cave Pension, where I stayed the first two nights, is right across from a restaurant called Top Deck that I had heard good things about.  So I went there.  If you go to Göreme it's a must visit.  On my previous trip there I tried to go but they were fully booked and I did not have a reservation.  Another advantage of going in the off season is that it's easier to get into places like this.

After checking out yesterday morning from the place I stayed on my last night, I took a walk out of Göreme to Pigeon Valley.  It's called Pigeon Valley because they raise a lot of pigeons in the area and use the droppings for fertilizer.  Those little tiny holes you see in a lot of the hoodoos are pigeon houses.  If I had kept following the trail in Pigeon Valley it would have eventually taken me to the village of Uçhisar, but I did not have shoes suitable for going up and down the steep hills on that trail.

I found some bee hives while walking around back there.  The cherry trees near the bee hives were full of honeybees.  Also I came across a tea garden along the trail.  The guy who has the tea garden is also farming on the same property.  He told me he grows potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant.