Delightful Turkey Trip 12th - 21st April 2008 Part 5

17th April 2008 (Thursday)

Yoohoo! This was the day when I experienced my first HOT AIR BALLOON FLIGHT!!! WOW!! The view is indeed splendid! And I must admit Cappadocia has very unique landscape!

The end of the ride was quite an adventurous one when we 'crashed' into this tree (I shouldn't say tree as its quite tiny, and has lots of bare branches). One of the girls suffered cuts on her finger!! OMG!! This was quite terrible!!!!

After we landed, we had some champagne!! and then we had our certificate presentation ceremony. The ride was US$220, but definitely a worthwhile ride!

The best part was when the guys tried to help us out of the hot air balloon. One of the girls actually told the guy "If you touch me, you have to marry me!" haha... what a way to get married!

After that, we 'rushed' back to the hotel to have our breakfast before going to visit the underground city of Kaymakli. Its a pretty amazing underground city as its got lots of facilities - including cooking.. toilet... hmmm... reminds me of Cu Chih Tunnel in Vietnam, but its a lot more spacious!!!

Heard from Taner that this underground city is 750m underground and more are to be excavated!! However, there's not enough money to fund the diggings! WOW!! This is so amazing!!! Imagine if it goes deeper and deeper!! I wonder what they will find down there???

It was outside the entrance of this underground city that an old Turkish man started to make small talks with me. He claimed that we spent the night together at the hotel lobby drinking tea!! Hmmm... must be drunk early in the day! I didn't even remember doing something like that!! HAHA.... anyway, strange things happened to me after my birthday... I suddenly became a Turkish magnet... attracting men & kids!

We then proceed to Goreme Open-Air Museum. There were some interesting churches here with lots of elaborate paintings in the 'caves'. One of them was the "Apple Church", "St. Basil's Church" and "Snake Church". We didn't go to the "Dark Church" as Taner mentioned that the entrance ticket was very expensive and what you see in the "Snake Church" can be seen in that "Dark Church" as well, hence, don't bother to go there.

We had our taste of Pottery Kebab today at "Dede Efendi Restaurant". Yummy!!! At last lunch today was GOOD!!!!

After lunch, we visited the Pigeon Valley. There were lots of holes in the caves used for housing pigeons!!! Opposite the Pigeon Valley was a Jewellery store and we went there to take a look at how stones were made. Following that, we also moved to this winery where we had some wine tasting, and some of the group members actually bought some bottles of wine back.

We also visited the Uchisar Castle Village where they filmed Star Wars!!! Damn gorgeous!!!! We also went to visit the Fairy Chimney... the name may sound nice and fairytale-like but they in fact looked more like .... ermmm.... male sexual organs to me! :P

At night, we went on a Cultural Show at Yaser Baba Restaurant. This was an optional tour at US$35. We went 'cos we had nothing much to do at night in the hotel anyway. The show was fun! Shihao was pulled out to perform bellydancing!! HOHOHO.... caught some of his stunts on video!

YAwnzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz