Two nights in Cappadocia Turkey!

February 29, 2020

Two nights in Cappadocia Turkey!

The wonderland of balloons and rock formations

We spent two nights in Cappadocia and woke up early both mornings to watch the balloons rise with sun over the valleys like magic. We filled in the rest of the day by exploring 2 valleys - love valley and rose valley, so in this post I'll break it all down in detail.

Cappadocia in central Turkey is famous for hot air balloon trips available all year round. There are practical dozens of balloons rising every morning adding to the magic of the scenery.

We stayed in Cappadocia for two nights but we didn't book a balloon ride because we wanted to save some money for the rest of our world trip. It was definitely still amazing without the balloon ride because the landscape is so unique and when you watch the dozens of balloons slowly drift through the valley it's like time has slowed down.

The first night

We arrived to Cappadocia in the evening staying in Goreme for our trip. After we checked in to our hotel the staff mentioned that there is a nearby hill we should visit to get some nice views over the town. We also revisit this hill in the following morning to watch the balloons rise over the valley.

Goreme at night from the nearby hill

For dinner we ate at a Turkish restaurant call Keyif and decided to order traditional clay pottery kebab. It was nice but super dangerous (I think). The waiter brings to your table a clay pot and then carefully smashes it open with a steel hammer releasing the meat and soup. I was paranoid eating this dish, fearful with every chomp that this mouthful would have a bit of ceramic in it that would chip my tooth. To find out what else we ate click here!

The first morning - Cloudy skies

In the morning we get up nice and early to watch the balloons rise from the same hill we were at last night. This morning was cloudy but the balloons still rose up. We visited in mid December and sunrise on this morning was at 7:52am and the first balloons started to rise up around 7:30am

We finished with our balloon viewing at 8:20am and then headed back to our hotel for breakfast.

After breakfast we walked just outside of town towards the Open Air Museum and find some typical wishing trees by the side of the road.

On the side of the road we also notice some abandoned rock homes and decided to check those out too.

At about midday we drove to a panoramic viewpoint overlooking Love Valley to get a bird's eye view of the valley that we'll later walk through.

We then drove down to the start of the walk through love valley. The entrance is here

The description says the "Love Valley is famous for its phallic shaped rockformations, from which its name is derived"

Basically its a penis valley.

We also heard that this spot is good for sunset viewing of the balloons. But after finding the spot we weren't sure if the winds would be blowing in the right direction for the balloons to come past us so we bailed on the spot.

After a google search we decided Rose Valley would be good for watching the sunset and it turned out amazing. We got to Rose Valley around 3:30pm and the rocks here are different to the white rocks in Love Valley. No phallic formations but the colour is a shade of rosey pink. It's also very panoramic.

There is a cafe right at the edge of the valley and we decided to have tea and dinner and watch the sunset.

At night we strolled the city of Goreme browsing the different souvenir stores. We almost tried a local hamam but after talking to a man who worked in a souvenir shop who didn't recommend it, we decided to save our hamam experience for Istanbul. So we just strolled around in the rown, had dinner and had a early night in.

Morning number two - Clear skies!

This is our last morning in Goremi and we decide to go back to the same hill as yesterday. Today's sky is much more clear than yesterday's so we got a different view!