And yes. It was pretty cold. Must say we didn't mind!
As you can see, the country side is of fairy tale proportions and we had never quite seen the likes of it. 
I am just thinking how wonderful it would be as a kid to play 'hide and seek' among these formations:
These scenes certainly took our breath away:
We visited the open air museum of Goreme where we saw a number of early Christian churches built into the hillside:
You can observe in the above photograph some of these early worship centres. While not in the best condition, the decorations were nevertheless fascinating:
The above fresco (and I am sorry for the blurred image - not permitted to use flash) is in the Serpent Church, named after the 'dragon' that was killed by the Cappadocian saints Georgius & Theodorus. Funny how St George and the Dragon keep on cropping up in different countries and cultures. (see earlier chapters in Eastern Europe)_
The scenes above and below are cave churches that we climbed up to and enjoyed visiting. Certainly different from what we saw in Russia! Even our western churches bear little resemblance to these.
The following picture shows where we climbed to and this is called 'The Dark Church':
We observed many frescoes in these churches that depicted several scenes, and would have been helpful for the early Christians to relate to events 2000 years ago, including this one of the Christ:
Looking from the inside out:
I know that there are many more places of worship we could have visited, but that would have been a tour on its own. Just fascinating to see the context of worship long ago by comparison to today's western world.It was fun to traverse the different tunnels, caves and former dwellings, though Carol wisely stayed behind on some of these. However, Cappadocia still has much to show us and it was obvious that one needs to stay several days to get the real picture. We will just have to be content with some of the following images:
....including the Police Station:
What a day. We were gobsmacked and relaxed in our hotel room with this view to complete our day in Cappadocia:
The following morning saw us visiting a pottery and being the crafty/artist that she is, Carol wanted to have a closer look:
Not content with just seeing how others do it, she took great pleasure in conversing with these ladies and showing them the complex pattern she was knitting. While I am sure they also enjoyed that, they would have been more pleased if she had bought some of their wares:
From here to the underground city of Kaymakli, built between the 6th to 10th centuries. Once again, we were impressed by the size of this site. The people who built these underground cities must have been outstanding engineers as well as very strong. The city included dwellings, church, grave rooms and storage. The best I can do is to copy an artist impression of this city:
Here are a few extra details:
The looks tells their own stories and reactions. You can fill in what these two are thinking:
This was the easy bit. The hard bit was to get Harry through! Believe me, some of the spots we crawled through were pretty tight for the likes of us. But we all made!!
Back above ground:
A change of pace saw us visit the tomb of the founder of the Whirling Dervish sect, a group we also saw perform their rites later in the evening. It was no use taking photos that evening, but the Mevlana Museum had a couple of good displays that helped:
The museum had a number of fascinating exhibits, including these great stringed instruments one of which is the Ud:
....plus these fine examples of early Korans:
And of course the tomb itself:
The fluted turquoise dome of this museum is also quite outstanding:
We left the mountains behind and headed for the coast. On the way we stopped at Aspendos to see the Roman Theatre where Carol 'wowed' everyone with a rendition of 'I could have danced all night'.
She loved the acoustics, which were excellent. People could hear her plainly even right on the top of the theatre.Then it was on to Perge, where we walked through the ruins and saw bits of the baths:
........the main street with remnants of the colonnade and shops.
And just look at this column with its decoration!
Walking through these ruins, we were reminded that the Apostle Paul visited this place back around 50 AD.We arrived in Antalya and looked forward to a 'day of rest' - well, sort of. Relax a bit. And that we will show in the next chapter.
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