CHRHAD World

Thursday, 5 July 2012 After the long day (and long night) the day before, we woke up and had breakfast in our hotel in Cappadocia. That day, Thursday, 5 July 2012, we were to leave Cappadocia for our next destination, Ankara, the capital of the Republic of Turkey. The total journey would take roughly half days, with one stop in Tuz Gölü (Salt Lake) on the way to Ankara. View from our hotel that morning But before leaving Cappadocia, we were brought to a carpet factory, producing Turkish signature carpets with unique motifs. All the carpets sold there were handmade and the design was elaborate, therefore the price was high also. Again, my family was not interested :)) The making process of the carpet The sample on the wall We left the carpet factory and went on to Ankara with one stop in Tuz Gölü (Salt Lake), the main source of salt for Turkey. The lake is shared among three provinces, which are Konya, Ankara, and Aksaray. We visited from the Ankara Province side, w

The main reason for tourists to visit Cappadocia is the seemingly well-formed rock formations in the region. Some unique features of the rock formations are naturally created, but to add to its uniqueness, people also carved dwellings on the rock formations, giving historical aspect to the place. These dwellings are called cave houses, which still exist until now and even turned into cave hotels and cave restaurants. But for the housing purpose, (Turkish) government seems to have encouraged dwellers to move to more modern houses in the town areas of Nevşehir, the province where most of our point of interests to visit are located. On Wednesday, 4 July 2012, we woke up at 4 a.m. to catch the hot-air balloon flight tour, which always start early in the morning. We were picked up by the balloon flight operator company van at our hotel, not by our usual tour bus. As said before, this flight tour was optional so not everyone of the group joined the hot-air balloon. It costed 200 US do