The final stop on the "Green Tour" was Selime Cathedral and Monastary which is dug into the hillside outside the town of Selime.
The location up a slippery (there's no stairs) hillside protected and probably helped preserve the ascetic lifestyle of the monks.
Most of what I've read says that the monastery was carved out of the hillside…more like a mountainside by monks in the 13th century. Though I've also been told that Christian Monks escaping from Roman rule first settled here in the tenth and eleventh centuries.
With all the diverse rock formations, I'm thinking Cappadocia must be a Geologists dream. The "Fairy Chimneys" give the terrain an otherworldly look. In fact, this was one of the area's scouted as the home of the Sand People in Star Wars. One look around you and you can easily see why.
As I mentioned, there are no stairs, you basically scramble up slippery paths up the side of the mountain…this is Turkey, there's no OSHA, handicapped access, or any of that. Many of the paths seemed to have been made by running water leaving tiny round mable like stones which sometimes make the going interesting. I also wondered how folks made it up here at night!
This kept several of the people on the tour grounded. I'm not a big fan of heights, but I wasn't going to miss this….even the ambulance I saw in the parking lot (I'm told it's always there "just in case") and the lack of railings or the prospect of the sheer drop wasn't keeping me form this one. To my surprise, I saw an elderly gentleman who used a walker at the top! Of course, going up is much easier than going down….
I was vastly rewarded for making my way up. The chambers, many of them blackened by smoke and soot had a strange and haunting quality to them.
The cathedral itself has a strangely haunting appearance.
You can easily make out the columns and some of the ornate artwork. You lose perspective and don't quite remember that you're in a cave until you turn around….
Looking closely you see the remnants of the frescoes and artwork……
All of the frescos and paintings that still remain have either the eyes whited out or the faces removed. The Ottomans, in accordance with the laws of Islam of the day practiced aniconism, which prohibits the depiction of the human form. So when the Ottomans took over……
All of the passages between the rooms had me regressing to childhood as I was having a great time exploring……
Of course, eventually we did have to make it down back to terra firma where I learned the answer to an age old question:
Why did the cow cross the road?
Well, to avoid the paparazzi, of course. Kinda corny I know, but this kinda tells you how far out in the country we were…..
Overall, the Green Tour was a very nice way to spend a day……you went from the depths of an underground city, to a walk along a gorge, to climbing up to a centuries old monastery carved into a mountain. And the ever changing topography was fascinating as well…..
We arrived back at our hotel pretty worn out and not in the mood for anything long and drawn out for dinner. In fact, just wanted something small and light. Mustapha suggested Nazar Borek Cafe and gave us instructions on how to walk there. Goreme is pretty small so it's kinda hard to get lost around the square, up in the hills perhaps, but not around the square. In fact, we saw at least eight of the people who were on the tour with us while we had dinner. The restaurant was packed when we arrived and the owner, a classmate of Mustapha's was very apologetic. But things had cleared up over the day, so dining al fresco suited us fine. The Missus decided to start with a glass of the loca wine, which she enjoyed.
As the name states, this place specializes in the stuffed pastries called Borek, of which there seemed to innumerable variations in Turkey.
The Missus actually went with a Gozleme……
She went with the Patatesli Gozleme which is filled with potato, onion, and mint which cost 5 Turkish Lira, less than $2.50 US at the time of our visit.
Remember the really lousy Gozleme was had in Istanbul? This was hundreds of times better and really quite filling.
I got the real winner of the meal when I decided on getting on of the Cigara Boregi.
I got the most expensive version, the lamb at 10 TRY (a bit less than five bucks US). As the name implies, this is a cigar shaped filled pastry and when it arrived it looked just like, say, lumpia…..
It doesn;t look like much, but the light, filo like pastry was very crisp and the lamb was well spiced, but still nice and gamey. It was quite rich and three of these filled me up.
We really enjoyed our evening here. We struck up a conversation with a young man who "works" (a very broad definition – his brother was actually working real hard. He just sat down and chatted) here during te evenings. During the day he is one of the ice cream vendors at Goreme Outdoor Museum. We asked him to do his call for ice cream and he shouted out; "Iiiii….SCREAM….Iiiii….Scream!" When we explained why we found that so humorous, he cracked up. We also found out a bit about life in the area and about him. He was a former soldier in the Turkish military who had seen quite a bit of action around the Syrian border and in other areas. He seemed to be glad to be home and we were happy to have him as company during our dinner.
We also watched the self appointed sidewalk "security guard" as he made his rounds……
He checked out everything in his area…if he didn't like you he'd start yapping. Quite a character!
We drowsily made our way back to the Arch Palace Hotel. The Missus was going to a take a loooong hot shower in the best shower she had on the trip, so I made my way to the terrace and had an Efes Beer even though my previous experience with it was terrible. And heck if it wasn't half decent. I dunno, maybe because this was the bottle version, or maybe because this was Cappadocia, land of fairy chimneys, underground cities, and monasteries carved into the hillsides.
Or maybe it was the view….cause that wasn't so bad either!
Thanks for reading!