Last day in Turkey

28^th June 2011

Today is our last full day in Turkey before flying off to Italy tomorrow. The Macdonalds’ are meeting up with some friends in Istanbul to spend of few days there before leaving Turkey later this week.

We have decided to have a leisurely morning at the museum Hotel before heading off towards Kayseri Airport( about 70 km away), taking in some last minute sightseeing along the way. We had a quick look out on the terrace in the early morning to see if there was a better view of the hot air balloons, and found it was a much brighter morning, but only 7 balloons went up this morning.

One lonely ballon descending

Departure from the hotel was planned for midday, and we headed to the next village on the way to the airport, Ortahisar. It is a small village, not unlike Uchisar in appearance, with a large outcrop (called the citadel) in the centre of town. It is less commercial than Uchisar and we found a few highlights, in particular, a wine shop in a cave that was 700 years old.

The "citadel" at Ortahisar

Wine shop entrance

Tasting room

Macca and Gail relaxing in the lounge

After an hour of wandering around we moved on to Urgup, a much larger and probably the most commercial of the towns we have been to in the area. Walking past a restaurant we heard a few Australian voices and had a quick chat with two guys who now live in Urgup and work as balloon pilots. They seemed very content with life in Turkey.

We walked around the main centre, bought of few small pieces of pottery that were similar to those we saw at Avanos, and half the price, and also bought some Turkish delight and other snacks to tide us over the next week or so. After lunch in town, it was off to Kayseri.

Council carpark in Urgup

Wandering the backstreets

The local men have a tough life (playing something that looks like a version Mahjong)

The scenery quickly changed from the sea of volcanic outcrops, back to sweeping flet plains within 10 km of leaving Urgup.

Approaching Kayseri the skyline is dominated by a huge snow capped mountain. The city itself appears to be an industrial centre with a population on 1 million people. There is a bit more traffic than we have been used to and the driving is quite unpredictable, and lane markings (if there are any) are for guidance only. It seems to take forever to get to the airport, which suddenly appears before you in suburbia.

Our next challenge is to return the rental car. There are no clues as to where you return it to, and not much advice from the police we asked for directions. In the end I pulled over near arrivals and Macca set out into the terminal to see if he could find them. After a while, one of the airport police came over and advised to put the car in the airport carpark. Macca returned soon after, and after another 10mins the Avis man arrived. He had no idea what to do, or any knowledge of the arrangements we had made to return the car to Kayseri. He tried to call Avis in Gocek with no luck, so we left him with the car and checked in.

We had a good flight on Pegasus Airlines, a low cost airline like Jetstar, and arrived at Istanbul on time, said our farewells to the Maccas, and caught a shuttle bus to the airport hotel. We were upgraded to a suite and were ready for a good nights sleep.