Cappadocia, Turkey - Day 3

Rise & Shine Ladies!

Saturday morning we woke up at 3:30am so we could be out the door by 4:30am to go on our big hot air balloon adventure.  We all got up & ready to rock & roll, & then the rain started.

Much to our dismay, our ballon flight was cancelled for the 2nd day in a row.  

(The first morning they knew it was going to rain so they cancelled it before we even woke up.)

We only had one more shot to get in our balloon ride.  Would it be a Mother's Day miracle?

You'll have to wait & see.

So we went back to bed & then woke up at a NORMAL time to meet up with Erkan for our full day of adventures.  Erkan started calling us "Erkan's Angels."  Anytime he needed us to regroup, you could hear him say "Angels!  Angels!  It's time to go!"

Most of our 3rd day was dedicated to hiking the open air museums of Cappadocia.  The caves & rock formations were gorgeous, so we spent an entire day exploring them fully.

While exploring the many caves, we found several churches hidden inside with beautiful fresco paintings throughout.

In "the dark church" I fell in love with the nativity painting on the wall.  I collect nativities so this painting was just extra special to me.

We hiked several miles during our day, but we loved every minute of it.  We laughed, we hurt, we rested, we ran, we climbed, we fell, we had the time of our lives.

This was the outside of the beautiful "dark church."  The paintings inside this cavern were my very favorite.

Here's another picture of the nativity. . . this one includes the star & the 3 wise men.  I just love it.

There were even skeletons in some of the graves.

It was crazy how many different areas we drove to, then explored.  Every twist & turn was MORE rock formations & MORE caves.  It was incredible.

We were having so much fun crawling through all the holes & crevices everywhere.

And everywhere we visited we found MORE of the all-seeing eyes.

We also started to get used to all the PIGEONS around.

Once our legs were getting tired & we needed a rest, we skipped lunch (we were still full from everything we had eaten the previous two days) & went to Eymen Leather Company.

They literally put on a whole fashion show just for us & even let us go up & have fun with the leather coats on the runway.

Their leather coats were SO fun.  Most of them were reversible. . . so it was like 2 whole coats in one.

I will admit, I bought a leather jacket.  It was too cute to pass up.

After leather shopping, it was time for dinner so Erkan took us to an adorable restaurant called Ziggy's.  It was owned by a sweet widower.  His dog's name is Ziggy so the whole restaurant had little dogs all over it.  It was adorable.

The food was incredible.  We ordered samplers that had a little bit of every meal on the menu so we got to try all sorts of yummy things.

It was delicious.  Once we got back to our hotel, they surprised us with spiced pears which we ate with the staff as we put on face masks & laughed ourselves silly.  Then we went to be early just in case we'd have a Mother's Day miracle & actually get to go up in the balloons!