Imagination point and Pink Valley- Kapadokya, Turkey

The previous post in this series is here.. The reason I put this link is because sometimes there are trips before other trips can be blogged and this thing looks like the Inception movie. Hopefully the links help in stitching together a timeline. Squarespace seems to have become bad at searching and showing the right results in the blog in recent times. Think their new AI is trying to understand the blog timelines and went “screw this guy.. too jumpy in his timelines”

Where were we? Yes.. After that pottery stop and lunch we went and stopped at Imagination point, a place where the rock formations are very interesting, followed by another stop at Pink Valley. This is apparently close to where the balloons land. Our driver used a back route to get us to an unofficial view point. It was 100+ degrees out and we wanted to get out and right back in after taking pictures. That was the plan till I decided to do Yoga poses overlooking Pink Valley. The rest of the group went back into the van, but my darling wife did stay back to help take photos.

Short video highlight reel

After this we were going to be on a longer drive. So folks took a nap while we went to our next big stop which was the biggest tour highlight!

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..

Wrapping up Istanbul- The Hammam experience

The previous post in this series is here..

We woke up on day 3 in Istanbul relaxed. Ate breakfast and the two of us left the kids in the hotel and ran to the grand bazaar in search of a fridge magnet that I wanted but did not buy on our first visit. Turns out I had imagined that magnet. No shop had one like that.. and this was a magnet for the Grand Bazaar. It is a missed marketing opportunity for those guys. Someone should make a magnet that says Grand Bazaar and sell it there!

Got to take more photos in Sultanahmet area in the morning

We literally watched it open. After a 15 minute search, gave up, came back to the hotel, picked up the kids and walked to the Victory hotel. It was a good 30 minute walk but we enjoyed it, did some shopping on the way and were ready for the Hammam experience here. We got to take turns sitting in the sauna as there were only two masseuses and four of us. Turns out the ladies doing the authentic Turkish Hammam experience are trained Nepalese. The massage was excellent. Then there was the soap foam bath. After the shower we all felt like there was relaxation but our energy was sapped. So we trudged off to find lunch.

Found a very nice busy place with some vegetarian options, ate fast and went back to the hotel to pack. There was the issue of wet clothes on our next flight but we could always deal with it at the next location..

Jr. and me ran off last minute for me to get some Turkish ice cream and we did find some good magnets for our collection.

A very short video..

Then we were off to the airport. We had an extra two hours before the flight and we walked up and down the shops at the airport and were finally off to Nevshehir for more magic!