Istanbul. Bridging the divide between Asia and Europe, it is a buzzing metropolis of culture, food, people and beauty, steeped in Islamic history and that of the Ottoman Empire. Istanbul’s waterways define it: the wide expanses of the Bosphorus, the key trading route up to the Black Sea, separates the continents, while the Golden Horn waterway divides the most famous mosques and ancient bazaars from the trendy European streets and international shopping of the Beyoglu district. We had four days to explore – not nearly enough by any stretch, but if I were to spend 48 hours new to Istanbul, these were the highlights, the must-sees that I would recommend making time for.

Day 1
Rise early and head to the Sultanahmet for the day, the oldest district. Though not compulsory, women may be more comfortable wearing long pants or a maxi-skirt to avoid stares in this more traditional part of the city. Start with the Blue Mosque, iconic for its domes and six slender minarets, the handcrafted elaborately tiled interior and colourful stained-glass windows, and notice the exterior rows of ablution taps down the length of the building, built for worshippers to wash their feet and hands before entering to pray.

Move onto the Hagia Sophia, built in 537 as a key church of Orthodox Christianity, though it functioned as a mosque for 500 years following 1453 under the Ottoman Empire – the remaining disks of Islamic calligraphy contrast with crumbling Christian mosaics. Though permeated by an air of disrepair, with a tower of scaffolding, peeling paint and the light illuminating streams of dust, there is no denying the historical grandeur of the Sophia, once proclaimed to be the most magnificent building in the world and the largest cathedral for over 1000 years.

The nearby Basilica Cistern is worth a visit: forgotten about for 500 years before being rediscovered in the 1900s by archeologists who heard rumours of locals being able to catch fish through holes in their basement floors, it was constructed in 532 to service surrounding areas with water. Eery yellow lighting illuminates the 336 columns and arches, salvaged from temples around Europe, while water drips from the roof of the underground cavern and ghostly fish swim lazily beneath the wooden walkways.

Sit outside and grab a cheap and cheerful lunch of tender lamb kebabs wrapped in flatbread and loaded with sides of yogurt and the traditional shepherds tomato salad at Şehzade Cağ Kebabı, where the meat is marinated for hours before being roasted on a horizontal spit over a woodfire, giving it significantly more flavour than the countless roadside doner kebab stalls in the area.

Keep walking to the Grand Bazaar, the chaotic and bustling hive of trade that has existed since the 15th century, for your afternoon of shopping. Don’t worry about getting lost – because you almost inevitably will – just follow the sprawling streets and shouts of merchants, explore the laneways with lanterns arching overhead and figure out if you want a Turkish rug, try bargaining for a set of tea cups or ceramics, and discover hidden treasures within the maze of shops. When hunger hits or you need a break, head down to the Spice Bazaar a few blocks away. Just as frenetic, the distinctive smell of spice fills the air while merchants try increasingly desperate tactics to entice you to buy their wares. Drink pomegranate tea, try a few of the many varieties of dates, marvel at the vibrant colours of dried fruit, Turkish delight and nougat, buy a couple of pieces of baklava and watch the crowds of people, locals and tourists alike, swarm by.

When evening comes, use public transport like a local and catch a ferry from Sultanahmet (or Karakoy, if that is where you are staying) to Kadıköy, the Asian side of Istanbul, familiarising yourself with the horizons of the old city domed mosques and minarets, the opposing vista of the Galata tower in Beyoglu and the bridges joining East and West. Head up through Kadıköy to Ciya Sofrasi, a lokanta serving some of the best regional Turkish food we had on our entire trip: think lamb meatballs, fragrantly spiced with cumin and served in sour cherry sauce, silky smooth hummus and lamb-stuffed roasted artichokes served on a smoky eggplant puree, and everything full of herbs, spices and layers on layers of flavour.

Day 2
The Topkapi Palace is worth an early morning visit. Opulent is an understatement in describing this residency of the court of the Ottoman Empire: bedrooms gilded in gold and lined with hand-crafted tiles, rooms with dangling chandeliers, the treasury filled with priceless jewels, the kitchens which used to serve up to 15,000 people per day, and the harem – the 400-roomed apartments that housed the Sultan’s mother, his many wives and concubines, their children and servants.

Heading away from Sultanahmet, cross over the Galata Bridge: a thoroughfare of people at all hours with its edges lined with fishermen and street vendors selling simit (a bagel-like bread), barbecued corn on the cob and fresh mussels with lemon. The Galata Tower dominates the Beyoglu skyline and is worth a climb up for panoramic views of Istanbul and a greater appreciation for its size and layout. Keep walking up cobbled streets lined with shops selling electric mixes of artwork and souvenirs, local businesses and stalls selling fresh orange and pomegranate juice towards Istiklal Avenue. Explore and shop away the afternoon along the elegant avenue, watching the old red trams pass by, eating at a local cafe or trying the famously stretchy Turkish dondurma (ice cream). For anyone hanging out for a non-sludgy coffee, it is worth the short walk to KronotRop, a microroastery where you can find flat-whites, lattes and filter coffee that wouldn’t be out of place in Melbourne. The quiet nearby streets lined with balconied apartments could have you in Paris or Rome, until you pop out near Taksim Square at the far end of Istaklal Avenue. The transportation centre of modern Turkey, Taksim Square is the venue for everything from football match screenings and New Year’s fireworks to all significant political demonstrations and protests.

Make a booking at Lokanta Maya for dinner: an upmarket bistro near the Karakoy end of the Galata bridge, it has been lauded by critics for its twists on contemporary Turkish cuisine. It was too good to pick favourite dishes, but the zucchini fritters, light, crisp edged and served with a creamy dill yogurt, the orange caramelised sea bass with roasted apricots, and the slow roasted lamb shoulder on a bed of garlic and lemon scented smoky baba ghanoush were all absolute stand outs. After dinner, nab some of the best baklava in the city at Karaköy Güllüoğlu just a few hundred metres away. Join the crowds and eat there or take some away, but make sure you get to enjoy the layers of flaky pastry, soaked with honey syrup and melded with ground nuts and cinnamon – for true indulgence, try it loaded with a scoop of ice cream on top.

And as an extra aside for those who love sweets, visit Hafiz Mustafa in Sultanahmet, a sweetshop open since 1864. Sit outside and people-watch or head upstairs for views over the street over your treats of specialty baklava, Turkish delight and nougat.

And just like that, your whirlwind 48 hours in Istanbul is over. A city unique in its extremes, in the sprawling landscape of mosques and high rise buildings, the street vendors and trams, centuries old bazaars and international designers, it should be one of the next places you visit.

If you any questions or comments at all, please let me know in the comments section below or send me an email – I would love to hear from you.

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Gallipoli.

Before last week, the word didn’t mean a lot. Yes, it was associated with World War 1 and ANZAC day, the annual red poppies and entrenched in the national consciousness as our most significant military commemoration, but that was about as far as my awareness went. That all changed last week when we visited Gallipoli during our trip to Turkey.

We spent three hours with a local guide exploring the small stretch of land that makes up the Gallipoli peninsula. And I mean small. I had no idea that during the eight months of the failed Gallipoli campaign, the fighting took place on an area the size of Takapuna, or that the extent of their advance was only a few kilometres up scrubby mountainous land. The aim of the campaign had been to control the Dardanelles, the stretch of water that connects the Mediterranean to the Black sea and is thus the key sea route to Russia, who were allied with Britain and France, as well as to take over Istanbul, effectively putting the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey) out of World War 1. Those in charge saw the Ottomans as an easy target, expecting to take them by surprise, storm down the peninsula and capture Istanbul within 24 hours. Eight months, 44,000 Allied deaths and 87,000 Turkish deaths later, the Allies evacuated.

The main battlefields are now cemeteries, the trenches shallowed and eroded by time, and thousands of unmarked graves lie all through the valleys and beaches – now holding names given to them by the Allies. First was Anzac Cove, where the first NZ and Australian waves mistakenly landed on steep terrain, unnoticed by the couple of Turkish battalions in the area. Around the corner is North Beach, where more troops landed later that day – by which time the same Turkish soldiers had had time to set up machine guns on the hill facing directly onto the beach, resulting in a slaughter of the first arriving troops. Many were dead before they even set foot on the ground. North Beach is where they set up camp for those long, hard eight months, occasionally boating a few seriously wounded back to the offshore island Greek Island of Lemnos where their commanders resided in comfort. Up the hill is Rhododendron Ridge, where New Zealand battalions led the only successful taking of Chunuk Bair during the August Offensive, the high ground that was their goal. They held it for three days, before fresh Turkish troops caught them by surprise as they were changing guard with the British, forcing them back down to the beach camps.

The whole campaign seemed like a tragedy of miscommunication and poor planning, a bloodbath of thousands of young men who never came home. Maybe if the very first arrivals at Anzac Cove hadn’t gone back to the beach to wait for the next waves of troops, they would have been able to come up behind the Turkish machine gunners and prevent the first deaths. Maybe if the British and other battalions up and down the coast had kept going further into enemy territory, rather than waiting three days for those at North Beach, they would have taken the Turks by surprise rather than giving them time to set up a front line. Maybe if they had some other way of fighting rather than trench warfare, madly rushing at each other over bare patches of no-man’s land, running over their dead friends and being shot down in droves, fewer would have been killed. It is a whole host of maybes, and nothing can change what happened. All we can do is learn from it, and remember those who gave their lives in vain.

I never thought seeing and learning about Gallipoli would be so affecting. But standing on the now peaceful grassy hills, covered in unmarked graves, cemeteries and monuments for both the Allied and Turkish soldiers lost, reading that they came from Otago, from Auckland, from Victoria and everywhere else, these 17, 18, 19 year old men with loving inscriptions on their headstones from their mothers who sent their young sons off to a great glorious war and never, ever saw them again, was heart-breaking. It brought it painfully close – these New Zealand and Australian boys the same age as my brother, who were probably terrified, cold and hungry, living in trench squalor, pushed into a war they never asked for and never having the chance to get married, to have children, to even live beyond their teenage years.

I also hadn’t realised the extent of the Turkish fatalities – 87,000 were dead on their side. At one point, 10,000 were enlisted from high schools and universities in Istanbul and sent into battle in May with another 30,000t troops, with 3000 dead in one day of fighting. They had to declare the only truce of the campaign to bury the dead as the stench of rotting bodies, left for five days in the sun, was so horrific. Although most of the Anzac soldiers were young single men, many of the Turkish forces remembered in Gallipoli cemeteries were professional soldiers, in their thirties and forties, probably with wives and children left behind. I’m not sure which is worse – leaving children behind to never see them grow up or not having the chance to have a family at all.

Anyway. This recipe is in remembrance of all those who fought at Gallipoli. A traditional recipe from NZ and Australia, ANZAC biscuits have been made since the 1930s, based on a biscuit recipe that mothers and sisters made to sent to their boys on the front. Those biscuits were teeth-breakingly hard, dry cookies not unlike a gingernut that had to last months, and became so inedible many soldiers ground them into their porridge. But never fear – this version, developed in the following years, is far more enjoyable – a buttery, oat-coconut biscuit, caramel tinged with golden syrup and brown sugar, and perfectly chewy in the middle with a bit of crunch around the edges. Notably, no eggs are used, probably because of the scarcity of eggs during war time and so they would keep for months when shipped. Of course, I had to give them a dunk in chocolate as well – who could resist?!

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Just as I was getting used to the 9 hour time difference and scorching temperatures of Turkey, our two weeks there were over. Another 24 hours in transit had us stumbling through Auckland airport at 1am and out into the chilly 10° night air, having difficulty believing that just the night before we had been walking over the Galata bridge in Istanbul, watching the crowds go by during the final celebratory weekend of Ramadan. There will be a more in depth post on where to eat and the best sights to see in a whirlwind weekend in Istanbul coming in the next week or so, but today is simply a photo diary of our time on the south-west coast of Turkey, interspersed with a few tips and recommendations.

The Turquoise Coast encompasses a whole range of towns, from tiny sleepy villages only accessible by boat to large resort towns filled to the brim with tourists, all backed by a huge mountain range and surrounded by the clearest blue water I have ever seen. The area has been inhabited for thousands of years, and remarkably well preserved remnants of ancient Lycian cities lie all along the coast, with huge theatres, columns, and histories of warfare and trade. It was a misconception of mine that all Greek and Roman ruins were in Greek and Rome: in fact, a large proportion are in Turkey, which has been at a crossroads of Greek and Roman territories for thousands of years.

The above photos were taken on a boat trip around the coast of Kas, in the Kekova region. It becomes immediately clear why this section of the Mediterranean has been nick-named the Turquoise Coast: with warm and extra-floaty water (with more salt than the water around New Zealand and Australia) clear enough to spot the turtles swimming around 10 metres below, you could stay in all day. Crumbling stone walls and a lone flight of stairs descending into the water were the only remains of some of the Lycian cities that formerly occupied the steep slopes, now partially sunken into the water, while off in the distance you can spot the Greek Islands.

Eating in Kas: 

• Eat lokma in the evening from stands on the sidewalk – these small doughnut balls soaked in honey and dusted with cinnamon are a must-try.
• Bi Lokma (Mama’s Kitchen): a top spot to watch the sunset over the harbour and dig into meze plates and homemade manti: a dish of tiny mince-filled pasta dumplings covered in a tangy yogurt sauce.
• Naturel: authentic and reasonably Turkish cuisine from the region, with very friendly staff.

Regarding the question of whether or not to visit Pamukkale, a place alternatively slammed as an overcrowded, overhyped tourist trap and extolled as a must-see natural wonder of the world: I couldn’t say. On one hand, you do have to drive about three hours to get there from other surrounding towns, in the middle of the day it is absolutely packed, and yes, from a distance it does just look a little like a dirty glacier or a melting ski-field – but swimming in the thermal water of cotton castle terraces that have been used since 200BC is something you can’t do anywhere else in the world. If you go, make sure to only go in the evening when the huge tour buses have left for the day, giving you a bit more space, the sun is less blinding on the white rock and the heat not so relentless. Before you visit the pools to cool off, take the time to explore Hierapolis, the ancient city just above the terraces which was the location of St Philip the Apostle’s martyrdom.

Slightly further north on the Aegean Sea are the most famous of the ruins: Ephesus and Troy. Built in the 1000 BC, Ephesus is an ancient Greek city which was occupied until around 1200AD – a time span and history it is difficult to wrap your head around. By being the world’s largest and best preserved ruins, you do just have to accept that you will be to sharing it with many other people – but by going there early or late you can avoid being jostled. Troy, on the other hand, although very well known in popular culture, is barely more than a few stone walls sticking out of grass and bush, so don’t go expecting what you have seen in the movie. However, reading a bit of background of Homer’s Iliad (covering the Trojan War) can go a long way to imaging what might have gone on a few thousand years ago.

General tips:

• Go to the ancient ruins in the late afternoon as the big tour buses are leaving and the day is cooling off – in the middle of the day, especially in summer, it can be exhaustingly hot with little shade available and absolutely packed with tourists. This goes for Pamukkale as well.
• Ruins on ruins on ruins can get a little repetitive, but reading a bit of the history before arriving at each city can make it much more significant and you will actually know what you are looking at, rather than ‘just another theatre’.
• Try gozleme (a very thin bread dough folded around filing) cooked from a roadside restaurant in front of you.
• Get out of the big, established tourist resorts like Fethiye and Antalya and into the smaller towns with more authenticity and  charm.
• Spend a day on a boat, pretending you are a wealthy superyacht owner, sunning on the top deck and touring around the Mediterranean (I wish!). We visited Kale Köyü, a tiny village situated beneath the ancient castle of Simena and part of the Kekova region with the ruins of Lycian cities built on the steep coastline partially sunken into the water.

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Green sandwiches on homemade turkish bread stuffed with silky smooth hummus, avocado, cucumber, spring onion, parsley, goat’s cheese and lettuce.  Jump to Recipe 

As I write this, we are driving through the dry, mountainous south-west of Turkey, having departed the coastal town of Fethiye earlier this morning. Pamukkale will be our final destination today – the famous natural white terraced thermal pools set into the hillside. Over-hyped tourist trap or must-see wonder of the world? More updates to come.

But more importantly – the food. So far in the trip, it has been a bit of a mixed bag. Confined to the touristy old quarter of Istanbul, Sultanahmet, and exploring small, rather touristy towns like Goreme, has meant it has been mostly kebabs, kofte (meatballs) and mezze platters (some much better than others). In saying this, the sweets have been amazing – every imaginable flavour of turkish delight and nougat, big juicy dates (with a hundred different varieties), sesame helva, dripping pistachio baklava, and lokma – small doughnuts coated in a honey syrup and dusted with cinnamon that practically explode inside your mouth. However, we have a couple of extra days in Istanbul this weekend to hopefully experience more contemporary, high quality Turkish cuisine, rather than the standard fare on the tourist trail.

The most unique dining experience by far, however, was a couple of days ago in Konya. As the most conservative city in Turkey, it was the first time that Mum and I really had to cover up (no knees, elbows, or anything in between), and the majority of women on the streets were garbed in the hijab (headscarf) with a long overcoat to hide their female shape. Remember, this is also in 35° weather. The difference in culture was confronting: coming from my perspective of being brought up never questioning that I have exactly the same rights and opportunities as my brothers, that I have freedom of expression and freedom of choice, the obvious inequality of men and women in strict Muslim society is difficult to understand. Before this I had only read about it, and never walked down the street to see cafes filled with with a ratio of 90:10 men to women, and young men wandering around wearing and doing whatever they wanted while grim-faced women covered from head to toe hustled children inside.

Religion is at the forefront of everybody’s lives: both in what you see and what your hear, with the call to prayer echoing around the city five times a day to remind us of the greatness of God. It also meant that more than 90% of Konya’s inhabitants were fasting for Ramadan, and it was almost impossible to find a restaurant that would serve you before 830pm, or sunset. Walking through the streets to dinner, hundreds of people sat outside, tables piled high with food – and none was touched before the signal from the mosque speakers rang out that it was time to break fast – the iftar meal. The restaurant where we ate, just 200m from Turkey’s most holy site – the tomb of the Islamic scholar and poet Rumi, was transformed for Ramadan: a huge leafy outdoor area filled with white table-clothed seating, candles and strung up white lights. The hundreds of people needing to be fed at exactly the same time required a set menu – luckily our waiter spoke enough English to explain it to us, as we really had no idea what we were in for.

The table was already set with condiments: not limited to salt and pepper, in Turkey this means plates of olives and dates, a rose water syrup, smears of tahini, a clay pot of thick yogurt for each person and a disc-like, dry bread that is a specialty of Konya. Traditionally, three dates are eaten first to break the fast, but many around us, deprived of nicotine from the day, got straight into the cigarettes. Soup came first – a bowl of tomato-like soup with lots of green okra, while other starters were a spiced mince wrapped in warmed grape leaves, like a Turkish rice paper roll, and layered spinach and feta gozleme. The main was a lamb kebab – tender roasted lamb served atop bread with the typical salad we have had all around Turkey – a tomato-cucumber mix with parsley and green chilli, flavoured with a light pomegranate dressing. Of the specialty drink, a heady spiced pomegranate juice with strong notes of nutmeg and cinnamon, I could only manage a sip. By this time some of the tables were emptying around us, with everyone hastening home to get some sleep before the 4am wakeup to eat again before sunrise. Was dessert coming? One waiter said no – but unsure if he understood our question, we asked another – and YES! The boys grinned. Some of the best dessert of the trip arrived: a thick brown caramelized sesame halva paste, shaped into a flower, and a honey-drenched layered pastry. Now 10pm, we wandered home past the lit-up mosque, where hundred of people knelt on mats to pray, bought dates at a small shop near the hotel, and stumbled into bed with full stomachs. The amount of food was perfect for those who hadn’t let anything pass their lips for 15 hours, but was colossal for those of us who had eaten all day!

Anyway – to the recipe. This is my favourite version of Turkish pide – soft and full of big air-pockets, it is perfect eaten plain with olive oil, with a smear of homemade hummus and a sprinkle of dukkah, with this Middle-Eastern lamb salad, or in these sandwiches. Here in Turkey, pide is often made very thinly, covered in mince, cheese or vegetables, and cooked in a wood-fired oven, but this version, adapted from Little & Friday, is as good as it gets at home. No kneading is required – just a few turns every half-hour, and 3 hours after you first tipped the flour into the bowl, you have warm, fluffy bread that can be paired with just about any meal.

The hummus is my favourite version yet – and the quickest way I have found to make the smooth, creamy dip without the fuss of cooking dried chickpeas or having to peel them, because sometimes you just need hummus now. The three key facets of it are the initial blitz of the tahini to smoothen it out and blend it with the other ingredients, being patient and processing the chickpeas for a couple more minutes to make it extra smooth, and using iced water to lighten up the emulsion – giving you a creamy, fluffy end product. Of course, if you have a few extra minutes, feel free to peel the chickpeas – your hummus will be silky smooth. I could eat it by the spoonful.

The sandwich is elevated astronomically by its components: a thick smear of creamy hummus, slices of smooth avocado, the crunch of cucumber, parsley leaves, spring onion and goats cheese as sparks of flavour, salt and pepper to lift it all up, lettuce for a bit of substance and texture, and, if you so choose, a bit of hot smoked salmon just because it is SO good.

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Cappadocia. Google it and up comes incredible images of chimney-like rock formations and colourful hot-air balloons flights over an other-worldly landscape that could have come straight from a fantasy novel. I knew little else about it before we visited last week, but that has changed! This is a bit of a recap of our experiences and recommendations of what to see, do and, of course, where to eat. (This is my first non-recipe post, but I couldn’t help but share the incredible sights of Turkey –  however, the next few days will see a post for Turkish-inspired pide sandwiches with homemade ultra-smooth hummus appear here, so bear with me!)

A little bit of history: the rock formations themselves were caused by volcanic eruptions depositing ash (which then solidified into soft rock), followed by millions of years of natural wind and water erosion, but part of the attraction for locals and tourists alike is the astounding history of ancient civilisations that made the area their home, carving out dwellings from the cliff faces. From 1800BC through to the present day, the region has housed the Hittite Empire in the Bronze Age, Greeks and Persions, allied with the Roman Empire in the time of Pompey and Caesar, been a refugee for Christians fleeing Rome in the 4th century AD, and over time became part of the Ottoman Empire and now modern Turkey.

My alarm went off at 4am – thankfully not as brutal as normal thanks to leftover jet-lag. All over town nameless white vans whisked hundreds of tourists off in different directions to balloon lift-off sites: flat patches of land scattered amongst rock formations, valleys, and grape-growing farmed areas. The tar-sealed main road quickly gave way to smaller gravel paths and, later, barely- carved tracks through tussocked ground, while partially inflated hot-air balloons lay like sleeping giants in the early morning light. My fears that we would miss the sunrise proved unfounded: great roars of flame quickly heated the air inside our blue-and-white striped balloon, we piled into the wicker basket, and gradually, so gently it was difficult to pinpoint the exact moment it happened, we lifted off. Our ascent wasn’t swift – we hovered a while, brushing past the tops of trees to wait for a gap in the steady traffic of balloons passing by above us, directed only by the wind.

A few bursts of flame by the pilot and we rose higher, at the same pace as the hills emerged in front of us – but never quite close enough to unnerve. Then: the top. Ahead stretched an epic landscape – pale fairy chimneys and cave houses, valleys and rounded cliffs of rock merged at the horizon with purple blue morning sky, dotted with hundreds of vibrant balloons. Some floated close to the ground, while others bobbed high enough to be photographed alongside the moon, but all moved in unison with the breeze. And behind came the sun – a pinpoint of light on the edge of the land quickly grew into a semi-circle, then a full round of bright light, framing balloons further back as black tear drops on a yellow-red sky.

Our flight wasn’t level – we descended through valleys, low enough to reach out and touch the stone beside, and flew high above the other balloons, then back down: our hour and a half in the air had passed, and we were searching for a landing spot. This was more difficult that I had imagined – no ability to steer meant the pilot communicated by radio with his team, informing them where they should be to meet the balloon. The braced landing position on our safety card was not needed – a rope thrown down from the balloon was caught, we were towed along like a colossal ship to the truck trailer, and gently bumped down, straight onto the trailer itself. No crash landings here. Quick work was made of deflating the balloon, and the traditional celebrations were held – 630am champagne, cake and a certificate presentation. Probably the most memorable mornings of my life thus far.

Our balloon pilot, Serkan Turgut of Kapadokya Balloons, was also phenomenal – would highly recommend. It is also advised to book for the first morning that you are in Cappadocia, so that in the unlikely event of bad weather you still have another opportunity the next day.

Though magical when viewed from above, the rock formations are just as fascinating when seen from the ground. There are many walking trails available through the Cappadocia region – none are particularly challenging, so bring your camera along and take the opportunity to explore the valleys up close. They are also much quieter than Goreme or the various museums – many tourists won’t bother with the hike so you are unlikely to see a single other traveller.

Start with the Goreme Open Air Museum: though the most touristy of the lot and you might find it difficult to take a photo without another snap-happy foreigner appearing on the screen, it gives you access to numerous old Christian churches dug out from the soft rock more than 1000 years ago. Ancient biblical frescos cover the walls and ceilings, the colour faded with time but still incredibly recognisable. Other rooms would have served as bedrooms, while another held a long stone table that would have seated 50 people. It is so far removed from 21st century life that it is difficult to imagine people living here – whole generations came and went, and yet we know so little about them other than the place they made their home.

The area of fairy chimneys, so named because of the distinctive shape formed over thousands of years by the different layers of rock, was another location of ancient homes. Three-storied houses dug out from the towers of rock dot the dry landscape – these you have free reign to explore, so long as you can find a route to climb in.

The Love Valley (or Honey Valley): one that first we dipped into in our hot-air balloon and returned later that day for a walk. Aptly named thanks to the phallic-shaped rock formations.

The Red Valley (Kizilcukur): trek through caves, tunnels and small valleys surrounded by green wilderness, and view the fairy chimneys, peaks, pigeon holes (used as messengers) and ancient homes built into the cliff faces.

Ihlara Valley: steep reddish cliffs tower above the valley, with the swiftly running Melendiz stream surrounded by lush greenery flowing through. Follow paths by the stream and enjoy the quiet and the warmth, the beds of wild flowers and poppies. Up the sides of the cliffs are old cave houses and Byzantine cave chapels, the front walls destroyed by time to expose open rooms with storage cubby holes covering the rear walls.

To eat: 

• Top Deck Cave Restaurant: our favourite meal in Cappadocia by a long shot. A family run cave restaurant, Top Deck offers top-notch Turkish home cooking in traditional environment. Meze plate starters and fresh bread were followed by cigar borek, a Turkish fried pastry stuffed with spiced lamb and served with yoghurt, while the four slow cooked mains were all delicious. Finish with a plate of bakava and ice-cream. You will need to book in advance, however – this place is sought after!
• Nazar Borek: a small cafe perfect for a light lunch on a hot day – sit outside under the trees and devour plates of gozleme, a Turkish dish of thin bread dough folded and cooked around a filling of spinach and cheese, spiced mince or even chocolate as dessert (most similar to a Mexican quesadilla), and Borek, a stuffed pastry similar to a Greek spanokopita. The sweet apple and cinnamon borek is worth a try.
• Dibek: another cave restaurant with traditional seating on low settees and cushions. The place to go to try testi kebab (pottery kebab), where a chicken or beef curry-like dish is slow cooked in a sealed pottery jug over a fire for 2-3 hours, then cracked open at the table and poured straight onto the plate.

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