Food in Ankara and a BIG Thanks

This country has delicious food. and in Ankara we ate a lot of it. We even had two dinners at Elif's where most of food was homemade which is a big treat when on the road. Here are some of the items we enjoyed:

Karniyarik - baked Eggplant stuffed with mince meat. Served with a grilled red pepper.

Zeytinyagli Enginar - big ole artichoke heart covered with diced cooked carrots and peas coated in olive oil.

Zeytinyagli Barbunya - beans, green beans, and olive oil dish.

Homemade cheesecake with sweet plum topping.

Manti or Turkish Ravoli - little pasta packets with a tiny bit of mince meat in each one. It's served with a little bit of garlic yogurt, melted butter, red sauce, pinch of mint, another spice called sumac (tangy, lemony), and some red pepper. It's amazing!!!

Turkish tea (çay) - we drank a lot of tea. Two lumps please. It is always served in these distinctive little hourglass shaped glasses...on a plate...with a tiny spoon.

Turkish coffee (kaveh) - thick and strong. It's usually in these tiny coffee mugs on a plate. They like to have it after dinner. Elif taught Amy how to prepare Turkish coffee so she can make it at home for Dave. Oh and there is a neat little tradition here for people to read your fortune from what's left in your coffee cup (after you tip it upside down and let it cool a bit). Elif read Vince's and Dave's fortune.

Baklava - this Turkish treat is sweet and tasty. And the people who live here LOVE it.

Lots of cheese - Turkish people seem to love cheese. Braided cheese, spreadable cheese, hard cheese like parmesan, mostly white cheeses. It's not unusual to have multiple kinds of cheese on the table during a meal...even breakfast.

Yogurts - yogurt in drinks, soups, everywhere.

Other random treats - chocolate cakes called Darky, Snickers-like bar named 4x4, and more fun stuff.

P.S. Yes...Amy has been eating some meat this trip. The people here are so proud of their traditional dishes...it's just too hard to resist. ;-)

So we'd like to give a HUGE thank you to Elif and Burak for their hospitality. They took in three people they barely knew and opened their home. They took time off work to spend it with us. They chauffeured us around. They shared stories about their lives and what it is like to live in Turkey. And Burak, you mentioned their hospitality as one of your favorite things about Turkish people...and we second that. You guys (with any number of children in tow) are always welcome in our home in Seattle. Blessings to you both and your little ones on the way. 👶👶

To Ankara, Turkey

Vince, Dave, and Amy took a bus from Cappadocia area to Ankara (~5 hours). It was a nice comfortable ride. An interesting note about buying a bus ticket in Turkey...you need to indicate whether you are male or female. It's mostly about making sure the bus company can prevent sitting a women by a man she doesn't know. It's ok for a woman to sit by a man she knows though. Interesting.

Another interesting thing is that the driver smoked cigarettes during the ride.

Amy's amazing co-worker Elif, and her super cool hubby Burak picked us up at the Ankara bus station. Amy meet Elif in Jan 2013 when she spent 2 weeks working in the Ankara office.

We stayed at Elif's place in her comfy spare room. Their condo is huge and tastefully decorated. And we got to do a load off laundry!!!!!

On Friday morning Amy headed off with Elif to work a half-day with Elif. Visiting an Expeditors branch office is fun and interesting. The Ankara branch folks - Namik, Kivanc, Ozgür, Baśak, and Okan Tuna (yeah that's his real name) are super welcoming and friendly.

While Amy was at work the boys hit the Museum of Anatolian History.

After work Amy and Elif ran a few errands including signing some papers for their new Volkswagon Passat Wagon (woo hoo) and picking up some baklava!! We also picked up her niece, Eda, from Elif's mothers. Her mother is an artist and has some amazing paintings. She is in the middle of working on one of a ballerina for Elif. Wow!!

Now we're chilling at Elif's watching a movie (We're The Millers). And hanging out with her super cool weird budgie parrot. It loves iPhones and rings. And it talks...in Turkish of course.

Tomorrow is the start of Ramadan...don't know exactly what that means but we know it's important to a lot of the people in this country so we respect that.

Home Sweet Cave

So I'm sure you're interested in what our cave hotel looks like. We took a few pictures so you can see.

The first picture is of the whole hotel from the valley across the way. Our cave room is on the top floor - the left one right under the solar panels.

The double room with the holes in the walls was Charley and Diana's. The holes are meant for pigeon houses (so they can collect the poop for fertilizer). For anyone that knows Diana and her disdain of pigeons...this is ironic and funny.

Our room (triple, we shared with Vince) had no pigeon holes but we had a cute little window which sometimes let in a nice breeze.

I asked the owner if these caves are 'original'. He said the government does not allow people to create any new caves in this area or even modify a cave in a substantial way. If you change something you can go to jail (I'm guessing there are some ways around the rules in order to turn caves to hotel rooms). This entire area is a national park of sorts.

We asked if people still live in the caves and he said some do. Very few people in the current generation choose to live in a cave. A while back the government built lots of houses to try and get people out of the caves.

For the most part the caves are always nice and cool. It doesn't smell funny or anything. And we've seen zero bugs!

Cappadocia - Weds Part Two

Amy went on a mini hike. Our hotel is directly across the way from a small valley with a few cave churches and other formations. Kadir, the owner of our hotel, said it would be safe for Amy to wander there. Just to be safe Amy picked up a stick she could use to defend against wild dogs. :-)

Amy's 1.5 hour adventure included:
1) Cave church with elaborately carved walls, alter, and some kind of podium.
2) Random caves to investigate (no guards here telling me not to take pictures, etc)
3) super cool rock formations shaped like cones and blobs
4) a pretty horse tied to a tree
5) lots of gardens and fields planted with watermelons, apricot trees, and all kinds of other yummy things
6) another cave church with a locked gate but I was able to reach inside and take pictures of the art (no flash of course)...it turned out to be one of the nicest art yet
7) two turkeys by a tree...imagine that a TURKEY in TURKEY!!
8) stopped by the Flintstones Cave Hotel on the way out to see how much it cost to take a dip in their pool. Flintstones is actually a pretty accurate description of this area sometimes.

Speaking of clever names... I like the name of the Coffeedocia cafe. :-)

Dave and Vince returned around 6pm...so they spend 6 hours hiking in Rose Valley and Red Valley. They also visited a little nearby town. Dave sunburned his face and Vince appears to be suffering from a bit of heat exhaustion. They hiked with Crystal, our new friend from Canada.

Later in the day. Dave and Amy hiked to the other side of this little town and caught the sunset.

Cappadocia Wednesday Part One

Woke up at 6:00am to the sound of dozens of hot air balloons floating right by our hotel! Dave, Vince, and went to the roof to check out the views and get some pictures. There must have been low winds today as the balloons were moving very very slow (unlike our ride yesterday which covered a satisfying 15 miles or so).

After our hotel's little breakfast buffet we went to the Göreme Open Air Museums which is about 1 mile from our hotel. It's a collection of about a dozen cave churches used by Orthodox Christian monks. They were carved and used between 900 and 1200 AD. There are some amazing paintings of saints and the life of Christ, however, we were not able to take pictures inside. We did get a few of areas that weren't under the picture restriction. There are various types of paintings there - crosses and patterns directly on the walls usually in red ochre and also paintings of figures on a plaster that is applied to the walls first (usually the more sophisticated art). The artwork made a lot of reference to Saint Basil, Saint Gregory, and Saint George (plenty of dragon slaying pictures). Bonus to anyone that knows why Saint Basil was really important to these people.

Worth noting - it's really noticeable that almost all exposed faces in the art has been scratched off. Not exactly sure what happened in these specific churches but there are three different reasons this was done:
1) other Christians during other periods when the church itself outlawed or discouraged using images (read: iconoclast controversy)
2) later Muslims once the area was under the Ottoman Turk empire who forbid any human image in religious pictures
3) other locals that were frightened by 'the evil eye' which btw is why the blue eye image is so popular here - to ward off the chance of someone being jealous of and stealing from you (pretty understandable considering how this area continuously was raided over the centuries by passing armies).

Thankfully some of the paintings have been protected and preserved (some by many layers of pigeon poo) so we can view them today.

Sorry about all the history stuff! It's super interesting to us and important to be able to explain what makes each site relevant.

We had a quick lunch (crepes, sandwich, and milkshakes). Dave and Vince headed out on a three hour hike and Amy headed back to the hotel with Diana and Charley. Team DC is headed back to Istanbul today and Munich, Germany early tomorrow. What a treat to travel with them!! We are reminded daily why they are our good friends (not just because they are weird like us but that's part of it).

Safe Travels, My Friends...see you in a few weeks!!!