We were lucky enough to be in town during Tulip Season and went out to check out the park. Keukenhof is one of the largest farms in the Netherlands and pretty much the best well known. It helps that it is within an hour of Amsterdam.

Beautiful, but not what I expected

I have been to a tulip farm before, though tt has been nearly forever. I came with a school group in 1995 and we stopped on our way into Amsterdam. I have a very hazy remembrance of rows of flowers in an open field in the fog. So many of the postcards show these same fields of millions of flowers waving in their multi-colored rows.

So when we get to Keukenhof and start walking around, I was a bit confused. The park is more of a garden show and presentation of flowers than just a farm. It almost feels like a theme park for tulips. Not in the cheesy kitschy sense, but in the manicured lawns and deliberately put together displays.

That said, it was still a fun experience. I have still never seen so many flowers together in a place.

Up close with Tulips

The main part of the park is a network of paved pathways amidst and around beds of flowers. Each bed has a mix of flowers presented with little plaques giving the name of the flower in that row. And in that effect, a lot of the beds, especially near the main entrance, are in rows of flowers giving that effect of the bands of color.

The clear benefit of having the flowers in beds along the walkway instead of in massive fields is that you can get up pretty close. I am still experimenting and learning my camera settings. Trying to move beyond auto. So this was good practice.

Themed Pavilions

In addition to the beds and walkways, there are a few pavilions scattered around. Each with its own theme and some with shops and cafes. The large pavilion we actually went into was displaying lilies. I know very little about flowers, but it was still fun to see all the different colors of lilies displayed in big columns. It was also nice getting out of the cold and into a warm very fragrant pavilion.

Despite the tulips being the center of the park, there are certainly other types of flowers mixed into some of the beds outside of the pavilions as well. Anyway tulips are far more widely varied in shape and size and color than I had imagined.

Windmills and Fields

Think back to that mental image at the beginning of the post. The waving fields of tulip rows under the watchful eye of a windmill. Yeah, that actually exists here too.

At the far end of the park from the main entrance, there is a windmill in a little square of food carts. The carts smelled wonderful especially from the heights of the windmill as the scents wafted upwards.

The windmill does turn, but its guts have been replaced by stairs appropriate for tourists. So in one sense it is still a working windmill, in that it still spins. However it is not a working windmill in the sense that it does not appear to be doing any real work. It does however lend a nice perspective over the fields.

The Fields

Beyond the windmills in the far reaches of Keukenhof are the fields. We were there near the end of the season, so most of the field was the brown of tilled soil. A few colored rows had not yet been picked and a few more have been picked but not yet tilled under.

I can imagine if you get there in the right time, the fields are just bursting in postcard worthy color stripes.

Timing and Seasons

Keukenhof is centered around flowers, namely tulips. Tulips which have a natural rhythm, growing season and time in which they bloom. So the season to visit and enjoy the tulips is accordingly brief. We came in 2013 only a week before the end of the season.

“Thankfully” the past winter had been cold and long, which meant the blooming of the tulips had been delayed. As we were walking around the beds, almost everything looked to be in the prime of their bloom. Only a few flower heads had started to droop and I even saw a few patches that had not even opened yet. So from a garden presentation point of view, we hit an ideal Sunday to go.

Getting to Keukenhof

We had a combi-ticket. For 27.50 Euros we got transport from the center of Amsterdam out to the park and back and entrance. Bus 197 leaves from Leidseplein in the center of Amsterdam and requires you to switch to bus 858 at the airport. The switch there is a little odd. At least for us, the Keukenhof bus was around the end of the Plaza building and about a 5 minute walk. We were able to buy this ticket at the Tourism Office across from the main station.

I saw a couple of advertisements for tours out to the gardens. The public transport option to Keukenhof we took was really easy and flexible, so there really should be no reason to need to spend more.

Flying Chairs

Vianden has apparently the only chairlift in Luxembourg according to the brochures. The lift starts on the far side of the river up from the bridge from the tourist board and bus-stop and goes to a hill overlooking the castle from on high.

I am a bit frightened of flight. I don’t like airplanes. Although I am not necessarily afraid of heights, if I feel like I am unsupported too far off the ground I get nervous, so I was a bit worried about the trip. It was completely fun though, a bit like the balloons in Cappadocia. You are not really that far off the ground. But it is a chairlift not a cable car, so no enclosed cabin. Don’t drop anything.

The views as you cross the river and as you head up are worth it. And the views of the castle looking down from above are amazing too.

From the top of the chairlift there are signs down a path which switchbacks through a forest down to the road into the castle. If you are going to both, definitely think about taking the chairlift up and walking down.

Vianden Castle

The chairlift is neat, but the real attraction of Vianden is its castle. Vianden castle perches on a very defensive (read steep) hill overlooking the town and river below. It is quite dramatic.

Some form of fortification has been here since the roman times (450AD) and like most things that have survived that long, it has been built and rebuilt several times. The current building is a 1980s reconstruction of what it looked like in 1870s.

The inside of Vianden castle is a museum. The bottom level is archeology and armor. One room they have dug out and show models and drawings of the various stages over the centuries against a backdrop of the excavated walls from those timeperiods. Upstairs is more about the history of the place and the house of Vianden with its geneology and several restored rooms. The attic has a pair of rooms honoring the work put into the restoring the castle. (Michael Turtle has a post here with better pictures of the inside than I have.)

I quite enjoyed the armor and the models both downstairs and up in the restoration display. It is interesting to see how the site developed and to realize just because we see it in a specific form now, it wasn’t always like that.

It is worth a few hours to walk around. There are not a lot of plaques to read on the walls. The tiny map we got talks about a guide you can purchase, so perhaps more info is in that. We just enjoyed wandering through the old stuff and enjoying being in a castle.

Getting To Vianden

We bought a day ticket in Luxembourg station that covered both of us on the entire network of trains and buses in the country. So getting out there is cheap.

You need to take the train from Luxembourg City to Ettelbruck and switch to bus 570 out to Vianden. Ask the ticket/help desk for the timetable to Vianden, it lists all of the connections and what days they run. During the week it looks like linkages run every half an hour and take about an hour from Luxembourg City to Vianden. Don’t get off at the Gare station in Vianden, there is one beyond that right in front of the tourist information at the river bridge.

Costs

• 8 Euro – 2 people Luxembourg wide transport pass
• 3.70 Euro – Single adult, single direction on the chairlift
• 6 Euro – Single adult entrance into the castle

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Vianden with its castle and chairlift make an excellent daytrip from Luxembourg City. Even stopping in Ettelbruck for a bit on the way home, it was a half day for us. There is also a Victor Hugo display and plenty of walking trails around if you want to make it a longer stay. The old city walls are also still partially there and can be explored according to a map of town I saw.

Check out more photos on our Facebook Page in the Vianden Album.

Where is Cappadocia, anyway?

Cappadocia is a region in central Turkey that is very rugged and rocky. It is known for the valleys of penis shaped rocks and hotels dug into caves. The name Cappadocia is a region and the most well known town is Goreme. If you see pictures of balloons in Turkey, they are probably over Cappadocia.

The soft rock of the region is the basis of pretty much all of the sights. This rock has been bored into and shaped by humans for many centuries and by nature for longer. There are amazing examples of both spread across the region. This is definitely a nature area rather than a city trip.

Time Frame

We had a little less than 2 weeks in Turkey for this trip. This is no where near enough time to do more than just get a taste of the country. We played it very fast, almost too fast in fact. We were in Cappadocia for 3 nights, though the first night we got in at midnight and the first day was spent recovering and not really doing much.

Was this enough? Sort of.

I would not have wanted to spend an extra day there on this trip. It would have meant less time elsewhere, but since it is a bit of a time investment to get out to the region it is worth spending more than just a day or two here. Although there were a few things I would have liked to have done with an extra day, I didn’t feel inordinately cheated. If you like hiking and nature-y stuff, it is worth a number of days.

There and Back Again

Goreme is the central town where most people seem to stay. Kayseri is the airport that seems to make the most sense and has pretty good connections to Istanbul. It is an hour from Goreme, but we were able to get a transfer free from our hotel. The transfer vans apparently work with a number of hotels as our van was full, but dropped people off at different places. Unless you have a car, really think about a transfer from the airport. I found no public transport options that would have worked with our very late flight.

Overnight bus is the other way in or out of town. If the list of places the buses were heading out to is a good indication, pretty much anywhere in tourist oriented Turkey will have an overnight option to Goreme. We did find a daytime bus from Goreme to Izmir but it was something we did ourselves. The bus companies seem to only know the direct buses and no transfers. Try to get a bus with internet if you can. Our few did not, but some next to us in the bus stations did.

Activities in Cappadocia

Balloons

The biggest attraction are balloon rides. Get up early and drift among the rocks in a balloon. It is amazing. Our hotel manager was quite helpful in setting up the balloon ride for us. With a company he knew and actually even getting a discount for the four of us in the hotel. It is expensive (140-150Euros depending on the company and discounts) and means a very early morning, but well worth doing.

Van Tours: Red, Green and whatever van happens to remember you

If you don’t have a car, van tours seem to be the way to see the area. We spent our first day wandering around looking at different tour companies and their routes.  In the end, for us, it didn’t make a difference. Our booked tour company forgot us and ended up shoving us on a different company’s van. There are two routes, red and green, which each go to a different set of places, but the differences among the companies seems minimal from what we say. If you have a car, you might be better off getting a guide book and going off on your own, though do the math as the tours include entrance to a lot of the sights.

We booked a van for the green route, which heads south and west of Goreme to Ihlara Canyon, by way of Derinkuyu Underground City and returning by way of Selime Monastery.

Outdoorsy

If you like hiking, there looked to be plenty of opportunities. Maps were for sale in a bunch of different places. I even saw a place renting ATVs for a more speedy outdoor option. There are a couple of nearby towns that we drove nearby on our tour that looked neat and I did find public bus mentions of how to get out there. Though in the end we just didn’t have time. Cappadocia ended up being the place for our down day.

Practical Bits

There are plenty of hotels in Goreme. The rock of the region is soft enough to shape and a lot of the hotels have burrowed rooms into caves and advertise as such. We stayed in the Spelunca after a review on Natalie’s site. It was fine. Way up the(fairly steep) hill, good wifi and the nicest and most helpful hotel clerk we ran across. Here is also a link to a look around Goreme again on Natalie’s site.

There are plenty of restaurants in town too. The town is not very big, but seems to be perfectly capable of taking care of tourist needs. Hit the supermarket for snacks before you get on our overnight bus though. There isn’t much in the way of fast food or street food like in the rest of Turkey though. I stopped for a doner before a bus and he was microwaving it.

A apparently local dish is a doener in a clay pot. Although it sounds traditional, apparently(I remember reading this, but cannot find mention of it again to link) it was created for the tourists in modern times. It is still tasty, just don’t think it is traditional.

Is it worth it?

You are committing to a flight in and out or several overnight buses so a fair amount of time spent in transit.

So is it worth it to go out to Cappadocia? Yes, I think it is.

It is a touristy kind of thing, but for good reason. The region is fascinating and beautiful and the balloon ride is amazing. Also it is neat to see a bit of rural Turkey to compare with the bustle of Istanbul.

Beyond the Postcard Vistas

This is an area that is built for tourists. Tours are easy and tour companies plentiful, each with their sales people offering tea. Hotels abound and so many of the vistas of pretty rocks blend together a bit. This area is incredible, but I did feel a little bit like I was attached to the tourist track much more heavily than elsewhere on our trip. This is also reflected in the online searches that offer tours.

I think to get beyond the scripted tours, you are going to need your own transportation. Our hotel guy offered to drive us up to a specific valley if we hadn’t seen it on the balloons. We didn’t have the time to take him up on the offer, but I think that might have been good to see some stuff without a salespitch.

There are also several other towns other than Goreme including Urgup. There are buses I found, but not with big-cty style timetables, so without a car it would have been a trek. I definitely think that is something I would like to get into doing, but as it was our honeymoon, it was a trip we were taking it easy on.

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Despite the number of tours and setups built for tourists, it was perfectly doable for us to book all the pieces separately and maintain both our flexibility and schedule. Cappadocia is definitely worth a stop on your Turkey trip if you have a few days to spend there.

Cappadocia was our middle stop on the trip. We were only there a few days and like the whole trip, this was not enough time to do more than a quick look around. Since the region is so wide and we did not have a car, we decided to take one of the van trips offered from Goreme town to see the sites. Here is a look at what our trip got us to see.

Green Line

As you walk around Goreme, there are tons of tour operators advertising these van trips. They are only outnumbered by the signs for balloon companies. We, naively perhaps, decided to shop around a little on the vans assuming there would be differences. It seemed though that each one followed the others around. We picked one and booked it. Though the next day they apparently forgot about us and shoved us on a different company’s van. So our shopping around meant not much in the end.

There is a green line tour which we took and a red line. I did see signs for a blue line too, but no one that we talked to offered it to us, so dunno. The green line van tour involves a lot longer of drives as it goes further from Goreme than the red line, however both are all day tours. Click the titles for more detailed posts on each area.

Pigeon Valley

The first stop for us was where we first met our guide and van. An early morning overlook of pigeon valley and a sand castle looking town. It was fairly early and the light was not good for pictures really. We were also rushed as the tour guide was ready to move on and we had just arrived. She was shouting for us to get into the van as we just wanted to enjoy the view.

Derinkuyu Underground City

The rock in Cappadocia is soft, which is why the forms are so interesting in the valleys. It is also soft enough for humans to carve. This human carving of soft rock is kind of the theme of the trip. Our first stop after the valley and nearly hour drive was one of many underground cities in the area. The city we visited goes down nearly 8 stories.

Ihlara Gorge and Lunch

This was the main highlight of the green line trip. To walk the Ihlara canyon and see the cave churches carved into its walls. It was a bit early in the season, but still the canyon was lusher than the surrounding lands and was an interesting feature of the area. This was also the stop for lunch.

Selime Monastery

Continuing the theme of humans carving the soft Cappadocia rock, we visited the Selime Monastery at the top end of the canyon. Monks carved a mountain into their place of worship and now hundreds of years later, tourists crawl all around and through it.

And Back to Goreme via Pigeon Valley again

This was a better stop at the valley. The light was much better for pictures and we were less rushed.

Tourist Shop

Umm yeah. It always seems to happen on tours like this. You “get” to stop at a shop that has “real local wares” and “samples you can try” of whatever the local food is. I get it. This is part of the deal. Tourists often do want to buy souvenirs and I can only imagine the tour companies have a deal with wherever. I almost never buy stuff here and am happy for the bathroom.

There was an Onyx Factory on the trip schedule as well, but we were running late and thankfully we got to skip it. I wanted to see nature not trinkets.

Was is worth it?

Based on the scribbles of the map we kept, I think we paid 90TL together for the trip. So about 25Euros each for the whole day, entrance into each area and lunch. The group was small (only 15 or so) and there was a guide, though her accent made it hard to understand sometimes. So yeah, the price was pretty good given the sites we were able to see without transport of our own.

I am usually not a fan of large tours, but I have done van daytrips in Ireland and France before and quite like them. If you get a good guide and group, they can be fun with minimal time investment unlike a large bustour. It is still a tour, so you are rails a bit, only going where the tour goes. Fair enough, just need to know what you are getting into.

If you don’t have your own transport, I do recommend doing a van tour.

If you do have a car, check out which sites you want to see and count up the gas and entry fees and a bit for your own flexibility and just do the math.

Natural and Unnatural Rock Carving

Water and wind are strong forces over time. They shape all kinds of rock into all kinds of shapes. The rock in Cappadocia is however also soft enough for much weaker forces like man to make a mark. The region’s main town of Goreme is well known for “cave hotels”, where the rooms are carved into the rock itself.

It isn’t just modern man and his desire for attractive hotel rooms that carved this region for his purposes. On our daytrip around the area we went to an underground city carved over the millenniums to house many thousands of people 8 stories deep. We saw churches and monasteries carved into the rock as well.

Look Closer

Look closer at the panoramas and you will see even smaller dwellings for even smaller creatures.

Yeah, wrong direction. I said look closer, but isn’t the scenery pretty? Look closer and further down.

Better. Right direction, but still not close enough. Though even at this view you can see the holes I am talking about, but check out a little closer.

Here we go. The valley we have been looking at is called “pigeon valley” and was both the first and last stop on our van tour. The valley is named mostly based on these holes that I have been pointing out.

Our guide explained that these were pigeon holes carved from the rock. The idea being to attract pigeons to roost in the holes and collect their guano (bird poop). The region is blessed with wonderful vistas and soft rock, but not really so much soil. So the pigeon poop was used to fertilize the gardening plots the people did have.

Being Pigeon Holed

Although all of these pictures are from the beautiful late day sun stop at pigeon valley, they are certainly not confined to that one valley. We saw holes like this in Ihlara as well.

This next shot is from our balloon flight the day following the van trip. I believe we were in Rose Valley and still I found what look like pigeon cubbies.

Soft Rock – Rock Hard

This view is looking toward the top end of Pigeon Valley in the morning of our van trip. It shows again the flowing curves of the soft rock as it has been weathered over the years.

Pictures of balloons over penis shaped rock formations is pretty much the poster picture of the region. The van trip we took ended up in different valleys mostly, but I did catch a few of the penis rocks.

The formation comes from the way the rock pillars are weathered away. The volcanic layering process that prepared Cappadocia for such scenery left some layers softer than others. If the mix is just right, you get the bulb topped rock pillars that evoke the 12 year old giggling reflex.

Are you giggling?

Cappadocia is a fascinating place. The rock formations and valleys feel almost alien moonscape-ish in one minute and remind me of the American Wild West in the next. It is totally worth a few days here.

Beautiful Practicallity of a Train Station

This locomotive motif is repeated around the hall. So while the scenes are historical, the tile designer has not forgotten that the place is still a train station.

A train station is essentially a practical building. It is built to manage passengers onto and off of trains. I always like seeing the practical become beautiful.

Historical Scenes

The largest panels in the station are historical scenes that cover entire walls of the entrance hall. According to the wiki page, the scenes are from the 12th through 15th centuries and depict battles, coronations and meetings of kings.
The detail of the tile murals are amazing. A few of the images are linked to larger files. The one with the castle is my favorite.

hires version

hires version

hires version

Mural Details

Between the large panels of distinct historic events, there were additional panels of scenes from life in the past. These reminded me of the scenes in Pinhao of the winemaking process, just a look at the life of people. Here is a close up of one mural featuring women. To get a sense of the scale, each of those tiles is roughly 4inches (10cm) on a side and this is just a portion of the overall scene.

Cowboys in Portugal?

Along the top of the hall is a band of tiles with more scenes. While the main panels are in more traditional blue and white, these are full color. And from what I could see from the ground depict cowboy scenes. If I had not known better, I might have thought it was of the American wild west in places. The scenes all seem to include horses in some form and in one place covered wagons.

The tiles are credited to Jorge Colaço and date from the building of the station just after 1900. I saw 1910 printed in the ironwork when I was there, but have seen references to 1915 online. These historical scenes and life pictures seem to fit with the romanticism of history in the Victorian age. We learned on our Douro river cruise and tour that there was a lot of British influence in this part of Portugal at the time, so maybe there is a link.

Other Details of the São Bento Station Tiles

Douro and Minho

The ceiling of the station is not adorned with tiles, but it is still ornate. The moldings of fancy white plaster line the edges of the ceiling. Right in the middle though, on opposite sides are the words Douro and Minho. These are the two regions north of Porto served by the station. We had just returned from exploring a bit of the regions on our post TBU trip. We had seen the train line in Pinhao as well, so this is where those trains would come from.

São Bento is the local station and right in the middle of Porto. The long distance trains from Lisbon come into a more modern station across town, but the trains to the region start here.

Of Doors and Clocks

Between the entrance hall with all of the tiles and the platforms are these doors with enormous stainglass details.

The center of a train station is often the clock. Keeping things on schedule is important for trains. The station dates from around 1910 and the art nouveau style is evident in many things the clock and door above included. As another little detail to notice, the anti-pigeon pins on even the tiny crvings to keep them from getting poo’d upon.

Learning the language through signs

I like signs and have written about them several times(here and here and here). They give a sense of place that is sometimes more real than the intentional architecture. Signs can also be used to learn the local language. With this sign from the São Bento Station amidst all of the tiles, I learned that the Portoguese work for pigeons is pombos. Not going to find that so easy in a language book.

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The São Bento Station (Saint Benedikt, as a translation) is a beautiful work of art and well worth a visit. I had no idea of what I would see when we decided to go look inside the station. I just like old train stations so it made sense for a visit. I am a big fan of taking daytrips especially as a slow traveler. So if you happen to head out of Porto for a daytrip, take some extra time to admire the tiles. The station is in the center of town and accessible from the metro stop of the same name.

Sticks and Stones

The valley sides are very rocky and yet the base was green in places, in contrast to much of the rest of the region we saw. Where the river bends sharply, the rock walls pointed up to the sky and very definitely reminded me of pictures I have seen of the American west. The rock is even reddish just like I imagine Utah to be.

Ok, those are not very green trees, but it was spring and those specific ones hadn’t starts budding yet. There were other sections with lushness.

This next photo is my favorite of the gorge. I mentioned before that I like fantasy novels. Quite often the stories range through different harrowing landscapes that echo the character’s journey always with some foreshadowing of things to come. This picture just represents that in spades for me. The deep gorge with its river and steep sides and the dark peak in the background (ignore the manicured path for more harrow). Especially as I do not read Turkish, even the name is fantasy-like to my native English ears.

A Gorge-ous Walk

All the signs called it Ihlara Valley, but really it is more of a canyon. The river ran at the bottom of a steep sided channel that meandered in the shape of that river. This whole thing was dug down into the landscape that was flat for miles around. Apparently this was due to volcanic movements in the area.

See I told you there was green about. At this point of the season, mainly just the low growing ferns, but given the number of trees around, I can well imagine this place being very lush in its season. More caves dotted the sides of the valley as well. This area was the home of many people in its history. Plentiful water along the river and protection in the cliffs made it an ideal home including early Christians.

Ağaçaltı Church

The main sight to see at the beginning of the walk is a cave church called Ağaçaltı Church (Church under a tree). Due to the lack of light and some other factors I just don’t remember from our guide, the frescoes that had been painted on the walls of the cave had survived.

The space isn’t very big. The main room was only a few meters in diameter with a few side caves, though in the form of a cross. Standing in the middle of the cave church and staring up into the round rock roof to see paintings of Jesus and angels that are a thousand years old was amazing. The motifs remind me of similar things in the Hagia Sophia.

Here is a movable view to see the entire church.

Practical Bits

The path is not very smooth and definitely not handicap friendly. In places we were stepping over tree roots and ducking under or around rocks. As with the other sites associated with the van tour, entrance to the park which encompasses the valley was a part of the tour.

We didn’t walk the entire thing. The Ihlara Valley is pretty long as seen from the map. We walked a stretch in the middle between the marks, so from Agacalti to Belisirma. The walk took about an hour once we finished going through the church and included a stop half way. The half way stop was a ring of trees and a few outhouse style bathrooms. There was a guy selling snacks and water at fairly reasonable prices considering it is really the middle of nowhere.

As we were looking at the various companies comparing tours (before we decided that they are pretty much identical) we noticed different tours mentioned different lengths of walk in the valley. As far as we saw on the day of the tour though, there really were only two entrance/exit points along the stretch, so unless you are coming back out the way you came in at one point, you are walking that whole 3.7Kilometers. Not a big deal, but we expected it to be a 1Km walk and it felt a bit like we were marching into nowhere.

Lunch was at the other end of our walk at a restaurant on the river. The covered porch was nicely breezy after the hot walk. Yet again we were together with the rest of the tour vans of the day. This is their normal lunch spot.

The menu choices were limited to only a few (chicken, vegetarian and maybe fish, though I don’t really remember). They served plenty of nice fluffy bread with several dipping options. I picked chicken and was pretty happy with it. Considering the meal was included as part of the tour and this place obviously makes it all en masse, the meal was pretty tasty. Really similar to an Iskender doner in that it was meat in tomato sauce and rice all cooked together.

Look I was being a good blogger and took pictures of my food before starting in on it.

Onward from the Ihlara Valley

After lunch, we piled back into our van to head to Selime Monastery. Selime village is actually at the end of the valley and we could potentially have walked, but the van was nice after a filling lunch. The other nice part was getting to stop at the random meeting of two roads. We got a few minutes to click pictures of the snowcapped peaks across the yet unplanted fields.

I’ve been hunting the names of these since the trip. The best i can come up with is Mount Hasan and Mount Melendiz as nearby volcanoes. Whatever they are called, I really liked the way the clouds moved around them. As much as the van tour was pretty convenient, this is where I wish we had our own transport to go explore the little villages like that.

What is the Selime Monastery?

It is a monastery complex carved into the rock. Similar in some ways to Meteora with its location into the rock, though from what I could see was not at all built up. Apparently built in the 13th century, they carved into the rock and used it like that. The monastery is in a region called Guzelyurt, which is just about the coolest name I saw in our two weeks in Turkey.

Not Star Wars

I am all for the geeky things. I seriously want to see Tikal in Guatemala due to both a boardgame and a few seconds of film they used in Star Wars. I had heard mention that the Selime area was also used in the movie, so I was excited.

Yeah, apparently it isn’t. Just a similar look to the landscape. As far as I know, the desert planet of Tatooine was filmed in Tunisia. And you better believe I am totally excited to go because of it.

I wandered off from the tour*

So yeah, after several hours listening to our guide, I just couldn’t deal anymore, so I wandered off. I climbed in and around the slopes and half-stairs. I found a few neat windows up higher as well. The rest of this will just be pictures and comments.

Cooking

This is kitchen spire/cave of the monastery. It was set apart a little bit, though I can’t imagine fire to be an issue when the place is solid rock.

Rooms

I didn’t walk through the back tunnels much due to time, but there looked to be a fair number of rooms carved into the hill. Not just caves, but real rooms.

Windows

The peak of my wanderings brought me to this room with a rock window. I quite enjoyed taking a bunch of different pictures through the same hole.

Chapel

It definitely was a religious place. Apparently there used to be frescos and color on the walls, but those traces are gone.

Location and View

What a beautiful day we had. The view from the monastery out across the rocky plain toward the mountains. Turkey seems to bring fantasy vistas to my mind at many turns.

Dark Tunnel

This is one of my favorite pictures from the site. It took a few minutes of waiting and holding people back to get a tourist-free shot down the tunnel.

Practical Bits

As with Derinkuyu Underground City, our van tour included tickets to the site. We had about an hour to wander around and it was nearly enough. As you can see we had a wonderfully blue sky day, and it would have been nice to just find a place to sit and be for a while, but that wasn’t on the schedule.

I skipped going into the chapel areas to explore where there were fewer people. I think if I had been there earlier in the day when I wasn’t so tired after the tour, I could have spent more time exploring. As it was I was happy to see, but was also happy to get back to the van going home.

It was worth seeing and something I would suggest hitting up even if you have your own transport. It is pretty high in places and there are no guardrails, so if you get vertigo, maybe you don’t go so high. Still pretty amazing to see that people really did live here.

More info and more thoughts at this blog post as well.

What is the Derinkuyu Underground City?

The Derinkuyu Underground City is a complex of caves and tunnels that extends 85m down into the soft rock of the Cappadocia region. It sounds deep and it is. At the deepest, there really is a sense of all of that rock above you.

We were told that it was a haven for Christians during times of persecution, though some of the references I can find while researching now don’t necessarily mention the Christian connection. We did see a church(main room in the picture below) laid out in typical cross form with crucifixes etched into the wall, so there certainly were Christians there at some point. It was a place that the entire village (including animals) to live unseen underground as protection. They could cook, sleep, socialize and worship as they saw fit. Now this is faith, to dig an entire village out of the rock.

Fascinating

I read a lot of fantasy novels. I grew up reading Tolkien (which is not really that easy to read when you are 12) and C.S.Lewis’ Narnia books. Dwarfs and underground cities are a very common in such books. The books talk about living underground and being ok. This was fascinating to experience real underground life. Sure, this was human made and not dwarven hewn rock, but still not exactly what I would have expected and will definitely affect my writing (and reading) of fantasy stories henceforth.

It is also fascinating both historically and geologically. That for centuries human beings were both so afraid for their lives and so dedicated in their faith to build such a complex. Add the geologic aspects of being able to do that. The rock is soft enough to shape and yet stable enough to hold form. Pretty fascinating.

The evidence from above of a city is fairly small. A few shafts bring air down and allow smoke to escape. The air down there, especially seeing that there were animal pens and latrine areas, was not really rosy fresh, I imagine.

Frightening

The rooms are spacey (for underground caves dug from solid rock) but the tunnels are fairly narrow and low. I hit my head several times. Like full on thwack on rock kind of booboo, not a gentle scrape. Not my favorite place for that reason. Even hunching over with my backpack on, I scraped the top of some tunnels. I am nearly 6 foot in my boots. These were not tunnels made for space.

In most places, the tunnels are adequately (if dimly) lit with electric lights. A few tunnels though near the bottom are fairly long, angled downward and without light. These were pretty frightening to go through. Mix the dark with stairs and the narrowness and you can get a feel of claustrophobia fast. I can only imagine what it might have been like for people with torches for like.

Don’t let my artful photos fool you, there were a lot of people with us in the underground city. Nearly all of the vans arrive at the same time, taking the same route. So while your guide and group may only be 12, there are 6 other vans doing the same tour in narrow passages. I waited in places to get clear shots without the crowds. This crowdedness was actually interesting to get a chance to feel a tiny bit of what it might be like to live around many multiples of this number (20,000 seems to be mentioned a lot), but makes the closeness and claustrophobia more acute as well.

Practical Bits

We went to the Derinkuyu Underground City as a part of our van tour. The price we paid for the tour included tickets into the site. From entering to leaving was about an hour, and that was plenty. I was more than happy to get back topside.  We were there around 8am until 9am, so if you expect to go on your own, it might behoove you to avoid that time due to the vans.

The site is about an hour from Goreme and the deepest of several underground cities in the region. It is also a World Heritage site. Here is a slideshare presentation with more pictures and info.

Was it worth it?

It was really fascinating to see, but would not have been something I would have done if it had not been on the tour. If you already know you don’t deal with caves or close spaces well, skip it.

Taking Photos

Photos underground in that dim yellow light was not great. Though I did take a few with flash, I was not at all happy with the effect. I did learn on our trip under Istanbul at the Basilica Cistern, that my camera has a “candlelight” scene setting. This seems to be just the thing for low light, and while I did get a number of fuzzy shots, I got some decently crisp ones too.

Scenes of Life

There were a lot of these tile paintings. It seemed like every exposed surface on the outside of the building had one. A few were simply panoramic views of the town nestled in the terraced wine hills of the Douro region.

The rest were details of the activities involved with making wine. Women picking grapes and boats shipping the casks downstream to Porto.

Tile Pictures Up close

As is normal around here, checking out the details is the thing to do. So here is the full tile painting. It is a scene of the area around Pinhão. That is even the stretch of river that we had just been cruising on an hour before.

Here are some close ups of the details. The scenes themselves are quite detailed and amazing, but the frames are equally fine. These designs are repeated around every painting that I saw.

It is still a train station

Despite all of the beautiful tile scenes of life in the wine region of Douro, it is still in the end a train station. The tracks run right by it and there are trains from Porto regularly.

Even the station sign was made of painted tiles. They don’t take a motif halfway around here. “Linha” is apparently the word for track. Oh and in Portuguese, the “nh” is pronounced like “ny”, so Pin-yow and Lin-ya.

Daring the non-existent approaching train, I took a few really low angle shots. It takes the “looking at the world from different perspectives” quite literally, which is good too.

T for trains?

Oh and I have no clue what this T thing is, but I thought it was pretty cool. It looked more train-like than wine-like, but not sure. It was hanging on hooks inside the station. If anyone has any clue what it might be, let me know.

Of the Dog and Wine

This is wine country. That is evident everywhere. The rabello boats we took a ride on the river in were to transport wine casks. Nearly every exposed inch of every visible hillside is terraced for wine. The pictures on the tile are of the wine. So it is just fitting to see a stack of wine casks. There was a small store/museum for wine in the train station building as well. I am much more of a beer person, but it was neat to see.

The dog was just there. Another of the really low angle shots that I enjoy taking. It was really warm in Pinhao that day and this guy was just socked out asleep in the shade. No, I don’t think that was his cigarette. I don’t really think dogs can smoke.

To prove I was there

So yeah, I like to take goofy self portraits while we travel. Somehow the idea of just aiming the camera at myself is fun. This is pretty much the only one I have where I do not look like I am in pain. It was a bright day and I was squinting a lot.

Also check out Kristin’s look at the station with some more info on the tiles themselves.

Pinhão is not the only place with a tiled station in northern Portugal. There are massive tile panels in the Saint Benedikt station in Porto.