Cappadocia

When we arrived in Urgup we found a room at the Cave Boutique Hotel in the centre of town. Our room is built into one of the hillsides and has a big balcony outside. The term boutique is a bit of an exaggeration!

door to our "cave" room

Urgup, like several of the towns and villages round here is in a deep basin and there are hundreds of houses cut into the stone with a facing made of rock blocks.

Many of the rock houses were abandoned centuries ago.

After lunch we went on a ride around the area and visited the Goreme open air museum. Cappadocia is famous for its strange rock formations called chimneys which were formed when lava flowing over volcanic ash which later eroded way down shrinkage cracks and formed isolated pinnacles. Some of them have caps of harder rock resting on top.

Goreme Open Air Museum encompasses a monastery complex that dates back to the 11th and 12th centuries. There are several churches, crypts, refrectories, etc cut into the rock many of them with frescoes.