If your dream Mediterranean Summer holiday caps at royal blue seas and poolside rosé, meet Cappadocia, Turkey.
This ultimate destination for the whimsical, curiosity-driven traveler, is known for its straight-out-of-a-folk-tale landscape with pinkish valleys and soft rock caves that could be inhabited by families of fairies (but apparently are not).
My friends and I tend to choose unlikely destinations for girls’ trips, and this one in particular still gets brought up at catch-up dinners.
The Cappadocia experience is riding hot air balloons at dawn, eating an assortment of white cheese and soft sesame seed puff pastries for breakfast, and then exploring artisanal ceramic shops in Göreme at dusk.
The city’s breathtaking topography intersects with The Silk Route, a network of trading tunnels from China to Turkey, and was developed into underground cities by the Indo-European race, Hittites.
A must-do is the underground walking tour to explore the dark and damp tunnels where Hittites kept their wine chambers and livestock while taking shelter from an expanding Roman Empire. Above ground, Cappadocia’s ancient cave dwellings, known as "fairy chimneys" were carved out of soft rock left behind by volcanic eruptions. These soft rock, or “tuff”, caves acted as a meeting ground for Christian churches to congregate in secret.
At the quaint Sarnich Cave Hotel Suites, I immediately was greeted by owners of the estate since 1850, Mustafa Demirci and his son, Bayrham Maden.
I sipped hot chai while checking in then floated through their picturesque garden, past dainty wooden reading chairs and kittens playing in bushes, into my cave suite. Every morning, coloured hot air balloons bopped up and down outside my window in the morning before I ate bread, cheeses, olives, honey, cream, yogurt, and dried fruits for breakfast on a rooftop patio. Treated like a family member by staff and servers, the stay was cozy, idyllic, with impish secrets at every corner.
Ready to trade the oceanside Mykonos holiday for a hot air balloon ride over volcanic formations? If so, say hello to Mustafa and the fairies for us.
