After lunch and a quick ice cream, our next stop was unanimously decided as the most fun; it was the Selime Cathedral. Essentially a cave monastery, we spent most of the time scrambling up through churches and buildings. We were only given 15 minutes, used about 20, and could have easily spent hours there exploring and finding stuff. Although things were kind of perilous, there was one completely dark hallway that at the end of it had a hole that fell about 2.5m into a big pit. Thank you flashlights and headlamps.
One amazing thing was the foot paths that have been produced over the years and years.
The carving and detail in the churches were great, but the views were spectacular.
Next we headed back to the Pigeon Valley, this time the other end. But in our minds, it was just another panorama stop, nothing much different to see.
The note about pigeons is that they were used and encouraged to come live in the valleys. They served two main purposes: their droppings were used as fertilizer, and their eggs were used for painting and glazing the frescoes and pottery. It was repeated over and over to us, and from the repetition and another stop, the day was starting do drag on.
Our last stop was at an onyx artist store. Where they take the raw onyx, shape it, smooth it, polish it, and sell it. And at the store things were priced quite highly. They also had a bunch of jewelry, but again it was on the high side. We got back to the hostel, and relaxed for a bit, before heading out to a Turkish night.
We were planning on hitting one at 9:00, but it was full, so we had to race to one at 8:15 in Avanos, about 12km away. We made it just in time and got ushered to our table, which was up in a balcony in tiered seating, but worked out great. For 50TL each we got a whole spread of appetizers, dinner (we all picked the lamb which was very moist and delicious), all you can drink (we went through 4 bottles of wine), a live band, and got to see whirling dervishes, Turkish dances (doing about 5 dances), and a belly dancer. It was an absolutely incredible night, and tons of fun. We were the last ones left there; we didn’t get kicked out, but met our self imposed condition of having our driver come into the hall to get us before we were leaving.
After that, it was back to the hostel for another bottle of wine to finish off a great night.
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