We were up early as usual and off on the bus for the Goreme Open Air Museum, a series of mountainside caves that was once a monastery and orthodox churches. There are frescos, some extremely well preserved. The church ceilings were fashioned like Hagia Sophia as a several interconnected domes. In Istanbul the domes are structural, but they’re purely ornamental in the caves. There are shops near the parking, of course, and camels available for a ride or just a photo-op. Judy bought a purse.
Our next stop was the under ground city, Kaymakli, which is a vast labyrinth of rooms and interconnected tunnels all below ground. The early locals dug them out as a defensive retreat for shelter against the Romans and other marauders. They were able to live for extended periods in the holes. They could make wine, bake bread, feed livestock and attend church. There were narrow tunnels that we shuffled down while bent over at the waist. They had round slabs that they roll into the mouth of a tunnel to close it off like a sliding door. There was a ventilation shaft for air and chimneys for the kitchens.
Next was lunch at Ziggy, a restaurant named for the owner’s dog. I give it four stars for both food and ambiance. Turkish meals, if I haven’t mentioned it before, start with a bunch of appetizers, six or eight veggie dishes, on the table for sharing, followed by any or all of soup, salad or the entrée which is usually meat, often a kebab. At Ziggy it was pastrami in filo dough—nice.
Next we saw rug weaving in progress with both wool and silk, and saw the dying process for wool, and silk harvesting from the silkworm cocoons. Judy bought a rug. And then, it was potting, we saw vases from either white or red clay, and a potter threw a Hittite style vase. They have a round tubular body so the server can pour from the shoulder—we bought one of those.
Goreme fresco of St. George.
Underground city-head room, not so much.
No comments:
Post a Comment