Meandering Miss Mitnick: A Teacher's Traverse: Allora...Cappadocia!

Location: Istanbul and Cappadocia, Turkey
Date: February 3, 2010

A peek at Istanbul's underground basilica cistern, which was an underground storage unit to provide water for the community 2000 years ago. This particular one had the upside-down head of Medusa built into part of it.

After a blissful week of meeting locals and eating way too much baklava, I met a new friend, Davide, and he and I decided to take a trip to Cappadocia, a flintstones-like village dating back to the 6th century, with many cave buildings and underground palaces. Much of the landscape was formed by volcano eruptions over 3 million years ago. Unfortunately, we had to take just a short trip, with the trip there and back spent on overnight buses. It was really a magical place and I would have liked to spend more time there.

We toured an underground palace that was built to escape invasions. It was complete with church, an air ventilation system, schools and bathing rooms.

I did get to visit one school- the one in the underground palace- which happened to contain a 'student cell,' where I am guessing naughty kids were sent...

Buried in the hillside of one of the cave churches was an ancient fresco. At this time, the frescoes were painted without pupils, and the eyes were just white crescent shapes.

Another cave community, but this one was above land. The buildings in the caves were intricately carved and I have no idea how they used their small tools to create such massive structures.

New friends from Cappadocia! Megan and Nick, along with Davide and I.

Our cave-hostel!

To explore the area a bit more, we decided to rent a scooter. Unfortunately, I think I bargained too hard so we got a scooter that died everytime it went downhill...haha. The battery went out so we (meaning Davide) had to kick start the thing about 20 times before it started to come back to life.Sure was a great way to get to know the town, though!

Valley of Roses in Cappadocia