Striking Out On Our Own - Goreme

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The Goreme National Park and rock sites of Cappadocia were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985.  Citing it's "hoodo rock formations, its' gallery of rock-hewn dwellings, villages, churches, underground cities and great examples of post-iconoclastic Byzantine art" . Our first full day in Cappadocia we hitched a ride into Urgup with Suleyman, took the dolmus to the Open Air Museum of Goreme  and planned to take a bus and dolmus on to Avanos   

The Nunnery, like no convent I had ever seen

Following the fall of Constantinople many Christians fled to the central Anatolian Plains, finding natural homes in the caves of Cappadocia. Their, churches and monasteries, complete with Byzantine frescoes and iconography survive and are preserved here in Goreme as part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Cappadocia

 

  

The Dark Church,  One of the largest churches at the museum,   Possibly a monastery
 

There are a few later images of the Virgin and St. Barbara.  All the surviving churches date from around 850 AD.  It is said there were some 365 churches in the valley at one time.  One for every day of the year.  Thirty are in stable enough condition to allow visitors

Refectory and kitchen of the Dark church.  Grim black walls & ceiling from cooking fires

Goreme Open  Air  Museum                                

Fresco's Dark Church

 http://www.goreme.org/churches/karanlik

Christ Pantocrator, entrance to St. Barbara's church.  St Barbara's is adorned with  severe iconoclastic decorations from a time when human images were banned.  There are a few later images of the Virgin and St. Barbara.  To protect the frescos no flash photography is allowed inside

 
 

When our guide suggested he borrow his brothers car and drive us around the valleys to Avanos we readily accepted 

You don't have to go up in a balloon to view the Tufa cones from above, there are lots of lookouts beside the roads in and around Devrent and Zelve.  The roadside stops are crowded with tour buses that only stop long enough for a photo op so a short walk will take you somewhere you can enjoy the view in relative peace 

Alternate transportation

  Imagine, you can see these from the road

Must go back on foot to explore

We owe the unique landscape of Cappadocia to Volcanic activity thousands of years ago.  The volcanic ash which covered the plateau formed a soft porous layer called tuff,  later to be topped with a layer of basalt.   Eons passed, the basalt began to crack, rainwater found it's way into the porous tuff and the erosion which produced the formations we see today was underway 
 Avanos

The pottery was not especially interesting for us, the tour naturally was designed to sell and we were not into buying bulky items on this trip

Carpet Co Operative

We found this very interesting.   We were met at the door and given a personal guided tour which included a demonstration of silk production beginning with the silk worm, taking us through the dyeing spinning and weaving processes to the finished article
                  

Young women receive training and certification in the traditional skills of carpet weaving.  Turkish carpets are made using the double knotting technique know as gordes.   Carpets are made of silk, wool or cotton. They may be made of a single material as in cotton on cotton or a mixture of fibres.  These carpets we saw being woven were silk on silk, the most valuable Traditionally women weave the men dye and repair

 The colour is obtained  from natural animal and vegetable dyes.  Wode for blue, Pomegranate for  Black, Walnut for brown, Chamomile and sage for yellow and madder root for pinks and reds.  All readily available to the nomadic tribes people, making carpets in this region  since 400 B.C.

Naturally our wonderful tour ended up in one of the vast showrooms.  We consumed several glasses of apple tea while the sales team dropped carpet after carpet at our feet.  We were shown, cotton, silk and wool, some produced in the villages, others here in the Avanos workrooms.  The sales pitch was low key and we learned a lot about how to choose a carpet
                  

        

We told them upfront we were not in the market for a rug.  That said, had we been this, would be a good place to learn what's what.  The government guarantees the quality and value, buyers get a photo and full description of the carpet purchased, shipping is included in the price quoted.  We  saw floor to ceiling racks stacked with rugs awaiting shipment, addressed to destinations all over the world
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