Cappadocia, Turkey - Day 4

Happy Mother's Day from Cappadocia, Turkey!!!

The best Mother's Day gift we received was a perfect sunrise with no rain!

NO RAIN meant HOT AIR BALLOONS!!

Sulemon, our driver for the weekend started calling us at 4:00am frantically trying to wake us up.  Since our first two days were cancelled, we didn't have a back up option for Mother's Day so we had completely given up on being able to go up in balloons.  Somehow, Sulemon made some calls & found 8 spots with a balloon company ready to take us.  We didn't have alarms set, but he called & called & called until he woke us up.  The balloon people would be picking us up at 4:20.  

Miraculously, we made it!!

Can I tell you how much I love the people of Turkey?  Sulemon is our driver.  We paid him to take us to the hiking places we hike & explore.  He drove us to the museums & to the leather shop & to the rug factory.  But during the 3 days we spent in his van, we talked to him, joked with him, & asked him about his life.  We all seriously became family with our tour guide Erkan, Sulemon, & the staff at our hotel.  The fact that our driver spent ALL NIGHT trying to find us a balloon ride tells you how amazing these people are.

Not only did he arrange the hot air balloon ride for us, he drove out to the take off sights to find us & make sure we made it safe & sound.  He was SO excited when he found us.

It was a blast watching each of the balloons set up.  As they lit the fire in the balloon, the balloons would glow.  It was such a beautiful sight.

This is the picture Sulemon took of us.  There were hundreds of balloons taking off Mother's Day morning, & he went to each & every one of them looking for us to make sure we got on ok.  He found us & took a picture of us.  We are so grateful to him for making our mother's day extra special.

Finally,  it was time to take flight.  It was SO exciting to watch the ground get so far away & then to be able to see this beautiful area from the sky.

We had the most hilarious "pilot" of our balloon.  As soon as he figured out we were Americans, he flirted with us for the entire balloon ride.  There were 24 people in the balloon, but his focus was on the 8 of us.  He was totally flirting with my friend Michelle which was hilarious because Michelle is so shy so she didn't know how to react which made it even funnier.  He made our ride SO MUCH FUN.

It was SO beautiful.

Here is a good shot of our pilot.  He reminded me of "Hopper" from Stranger Things.  He was SO fun.

Landing the balloons was HILARIOUS.  All of a sudden we saw a truck with a trailer driving HIGH SPEED alongside our balloon.  We then realized we were supposed to LAND on it.  Holy cow!  It was NEVER going to happen.

We wrecked into the trailer.

Then the pilot put more hot air in the balloon, raised us up a bit, & tried again.  This time we had a perfect landing directly in the center of the trailer.

And the team started to take the balloon down for the day.  It was an amazing process to be a part of.

We loved our new pilot friend.

After our flight, they popped a bottle of strawberry juice to celebrate.  And of course, Erika caught it with her bare hands!  She can catch anything (softball star for the win).

After celebrating our balloon ride, we made our way back to our hotel for Mother's Day Breakfast.  The staff made us so many delicious things.

My new favorite thing is tahini (sesame seed butter) mixed with grape molasses.  It makes a spread for bread that is almost like nutella/peanut butter, but not.  It is SO good.  And of course, I was still completely in love with the tomato paste.

After breakfast Erkan & Sulemon came to pick us up for our Mother's Day adventures.  We had to get a picture with Sulemon.  He was our favorite person of the day because he helped get us a hot air balloon ride.

Erkan had a wonderful hike planned for us.  It was a 7 mile hike through beautiful vineyard lands.  There were several rock formations & a few cave churches to explore.  He was really excited to take us here.

As we were hiking through the vineyard, we noticed a sweet little old lady weeding her grape vineyard.  It was a huge vineyard & she was there all by herself, weeding away on her own.

I asked Erkan if we could stop & say hello to her & ask if she needed any help.

This was the highlight of our entire trip.  We stopped to talk to this sweet woman & we stayed there for almost an hour.  She was the SWEETEST lady ever.  She was 73 years old, was missing several fingers, & walked with a limp, but she was adorable.  She would sit under each grape vine & weed underneath it.  We loved talking to her.

Pretty soon, all 8 of us were on our hands & knees helping her weed that vineyard.  What better way to spend mother's day, than serving this sweet mother.  She thought it was so funny that we wanted to work alongside her.

After weeding the vineyard, she invited us to her cave (yes people still own & live in the caves).  She wanted to share with us her dried apricots & raisins she just finished drying at the end of this grape harvest.

She watched intently as each of us ate her homemade raisins.  They were delicious.

As we got ready to say goodbye.  We all gave our new friend a hug & wished her a very happy Mother's Day.

Then we continued on our hike through the valley.  There were several caves to explore along the way.  Some were churches with intricate carvings & paintings, & some were just pigeon hotels.

We even had some wild dogs join us for part of our journey.  There are a LOT of wild dogs & cats around Cappadocia.  They were everywhere.

There was one church in particular that was stunning.  It was just a cave from the outside, but the inside was gorgeous.  It was carved with pillars & beautiful details all around.

Inside this cavern we found an area that you could climb up to take a peek over the edge of the cliffside.  It was hard to get up so Erika helped us by giving us little pushes up the rock wall.  Going up was easy, coming down, not so much.

Once we all climbed to the top, we found a whole 2nd floor full of little pigeon houses.  We were REALLY high up, but it was an amazing view.

After a good half hour on the top of the world, it was time to come down.  Coming down was a LOT harder than climbing up.  I quickly realized that I didn't have the arm span needed to lower myself down the hole to get to the next layer down.

I ended up having to blindly jump down the hole into Erika's arms.  Talk about a trust fall.  She caught me easily.

We hiked some more & came across this sweet man who had set up an orange juice stand beneath one of the cave churches.  His family owns the cave church so he sells fresh squeezed orange juice near the entrance to he can keep his eye on things.

His orange juice was delicious.

And his cave church was equally gorgeous.

The paintings were beautiful & SO well preserved.

On our way back down the mountain we found all sorts of fun things. . . horses, cows, mini horses, & more.

Our next destination was an underground city.  You read that right.  It was an entire city that ran for MILES UNDERNEATH THE GROUND.

Several people used this tunnel network to escape Christian persecution during the time of the apostles.  It was incredible to see how these people lived & survived during that time.  This underground city was full of rooms, tunnels, & booby traps.

After visiting the underground city we went back to Erkan's restaurant "Tandir House Cappadocia" to have a Turkish cooking class with his wife Ozzy.

They taught us how to make Turkish flatbread, Turkish Ravioli, & Pasta Sauce.

Here I'm rolling the bread.  We started out with small balls of dough & had to roll them the size of small tortillas.

Once we rolled it, we cooked it on the hot plate.

We also had to roll out pasta dough (basically egg yolks & flour) to the size of the rolling table. . . then slice it into tiny little squares.  We filled the squares with seasoned meat & folded them into adorable little pasta shapes.

We also got to watch them take the stew out of the stone oven for the day.  They make this stew early in the morning & let it cook all day long to serve at dinner.

Cooking in the kitchen was really fun too.  I got to make the pasta sauce.

Our pasta was BEAUTIFUL.

So remember that artist I was telling you about?  Rachel asked Erkan how it would be possible to get him to paint a rock for her.  The artist was thrilled at the prospect of someone "wanting" his work so he spent 24 hours straight painting that beautiful nativity from the dark church on a rock from the valley for Rachel.  He brought it to the restaurant & we all immediately fell in love with it.

So I asked him if I could pay him to paint one for me too.  He agreed.  My request was similar: the nativity from the dark church, but I wanted the start in the sky & the 3 wise men as well.  He said he could do it & ship it to me.  I was SO excited.

The artist was such a sweet & humble man.  He was so excited that his work was being noticed.

He painted all the murals in Erkan's restaurant.

He had it done two days after we left Turkey.  He is SO fast & SO good.  I love my nativity so much.  This was painted on a rock from the valley there in Cappadocia.  He painted it in the style of my favorite cave church (the dark church), & he added the star & the 3 wise men as well.  The paint was sealed with pigeon egg yolk, just as the paintings inside the churches were sealed.  It was perfect in every way.  It was a great item to "remember" my trip by & it's so very special because it was made specifically for me by the sweetest painter I've ever met.

When we got back to our hotel, the hotel staff were all waiting for us with Mother's Day cake, baklava, & a fresh red rose for each of us for Mother's Day.  THIS is what I'm talking about.  FAMILY.  We didn't just meet people in Turkey. . . we met FAMILY.  It was going to be hard to leave.  I had fallen in love with Turkey.