Anatolya's famous pottery- at Avanos Kapadokya

The previous post in this series is here..

Our next stop on the tour was a short drive away to Avanos. We crossed a river and saw a lot of brick makers on the way. Then we came to a rock gallery that was pretty much cut into a cave. The video says it all.. the have some amazing artists who have been hand painting these pieces for 30 to 40 years and it is fascinating to watch their hands play with that brush. “You get good at what you practice” is something we hear in yoga class.. that came to mind.

Not a single false step and with a lot of imagination! We walked through the gallery, then got a little pottery demo, and finally it was time to say bye. Our fellow tourists bought stuff, but given we were traveling without check in bags, just had to be content with watching. They do ship to the US but that was for larger pieces.

Right outside this place Ali Baba was selling butta .. there was a heated debate on having that before lunch. Again by a 3:1 veto the ladies decided to go for it. My logic vs. Ali Baba’s silent marketing where he gave them a look and roasted the corn with such care… I had no chance!

Then we stopped by a large rest stop place that had a buffet. All the tour buses stopped here. There were plenty of vegetarian options. Our guide had lunch tickets. Anything else like bottled water or juices were extra. (so keep some Euro or Turkish currency handy!). After lunch we were off to see more rock formations ..

Here are a few pictures of our Avanos experience..

and a video highlights reel..

Learned a lot in this segment. Tulips came from Turkey! Tulips were the symbol for god in ancient Islam. The tree of life which we had seen just two days back in Topkapi palace but had not connected as a “tree of life”, etc.

First we thought this was a marketing stop. Turned out to be one of the highlights of the tour! The artwork in this place is amazing.. just be careful when walking around. You break it, you bought it and most of the pieces are in the few hundred dollar range!

Lover's hill - A step by step guide to embarrassing your kids

The previous post in this series is here..

The second stop in our all day tour was Lover’s hill aka aşıklar tepesi. This is also called as sunset point.

There is a flat edge from which you can see the rock structures in the valley and get nice pano views. There are cute photo spots and a cafe here. While the kids and our fellow van tourists took a break, we decided to do a 360 view video to Turkish music. The guy who ran this gig promised an edited version in 5 minutes. I was more curious about his editing skills and wanted to sign up. San was already practicing local dance moves with our guide.

If I had a dollar (okay, a 1000 dollars given inflation) for every time I heard “Appa please”, “Please appa”, “Appa NO!”, “let her do it”, “I will never talk to you again”, etc in the five minutes that led up to me getting on that little jig, we could have paid for the entire trip and more. However that is step 1 of of this guide. You declare intent.

Then you act like you are considering their suggestion. Then you go “nah!”, I am going to go for it. Much like how they did things to you when they were babies.

The video highlights reel here is for your absolute enjoyment! This went on the tour guide service’s reels. They contract for Viator. But first, some photos.. given where this was going, the kids took one photo and ran as far away from us as possible. Had to beg Jr. to take a video of our video being made (she Zoomed !)

when we drove out saw a baby horsie walking around with a pack.. These had no owners, they were wild horses. Apparently this place is famous for this type of horse, which was once exported to other parts of the world 1400 years ago!

The HIGHLIGHT of the 40 minutes spent here!

Normally cut out any music that will be flagged as copyright, but in this case, the dancing does not go well without the music, so left it in. Youtube promptly flagged it and said the video will not be visible in a lot of locations. My apologies if you cannot see this video..

Was thinking of setting up this jig at the top of one of our local peaks with a pano view and making life interesting. The guy has some really good edit skills but was thinking I can do “comparable if not better” with all my blogging and video editing experience. He airdropped it right away!

Thoroughly enjoyed this experience.. before we moved on to the next stop..

Goreme Open Air Museum - Kapadokya

The previous post in this trip series is here..

After watching the balloons rise and having a nice breakfast we were picked up at the lobby by our tourguide and driver for a Viator all day tour of Kapadokya. She was a very nice person trying to manage the time between giving us history and trying to have fun. She did an excellent job.

To thank her we participated in her promo reels!

Our first stop in the tour was the Goreme open air museum. This place has some amazing history during post crucifixion times when Christianity was a forbidden religion. The cave monastries and the paintings inside that date back to 700 AD were amazing. Unfortunately no pictures in most places allowed, understandably as the flash might damage what is left of the pigments.

Here are the pictures.. the first one was by Jr. who was trying to get the sun flare to land on us.. I got to teach her geometrical optics during this process! She was temporarily impressed with daddy for a good 30 seconds.

There is also a lot of history on St. George here that I found fascinating.

and here is the short video highlight reel..

On the whole this was an amazing place. It was good we started the trip here because by the time we got out to the exit, temperatures were already in the 90’s! We were glad to get back to air conditioning for a while..