The first night and Istanbul

The first view of Istanbul other than the taxi ride from the airport was from the hotel bedroom. There can be few more stunning night time city shots than the illuminated Mosques of Istanbul. Helped by the hotel's roof restaurant.

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From any angle the Blue Mosque is spectacular as the next four shots show 1) over the Sea of Marmaris, 2) over the Bosporus, 3) from the Bosporus and 4) past the Egyptian obelisque and the Roman 'hippodrome'.

Garth looks up.......firstly at the 'blue' interior which gives the mosque its name....

and at the unexpected Christian freasco - and finally the intricate decoration

A nice shot (right) but

somehow bagels didn't

seem to fit old Istanbul

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Springtime in Paris? or Tulips in Amsterdam? Try springtime tulips in Istanbul

We had chosen the busiest weekend of the year - Easter - to see Istanbul, not a special time in the Muslim calendar but a popular time for northern Europeans to visit this vibrant city. Joining day to day commuters together with visitors getting to the ferry and railway station was hard work.

But Istanbul had given us a great start to the trip

To the interior

In the rush hour we joined commuters on one of many ferries leaving Europe to go home in Asia!!! The red case marks our seat. Note the incognito blond to the right of the case.













The ferry approaches the handsome Hydapasa station. Sadly the old steam engine (right) isn't coming with us - but the Turks must have had a bit of a love affair with steam because we found old engines lying about everywhere















Jacky starts to unpack a few things in the clean and tidy train then....


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.....we blew £9 each on a three course dinner and a bottle of wine!! We did try a couple of 'yaki' the local 'oozo' In fact that's one in Jacky's left hand!!
The train as shown here is not quite the Orient Express but its neat and clean - a 2 berth sleeper for £22 'whole pounds' is not to be sniffed at
On waking just east of Aksehir we were rolling across the Anatolian Plain. The second shot is after breakfast approaching Konya our destination












The train arrives 13 hours and 500 miles later (not quick!!) in Konya in central Turkey. The guard gives Jacky a friendly farewell 'hug'.













(Below) First impressions of the arid interior (left) and the end of a lava flow with its source volcano, Mt Hasan, just visible in the distant cloud behind. This was the first clue as to how the Cappadocian formations came to be.

Some unexpected bonuses

We had expected the roads to be not

unlike this gravel track leading to a

remote church near Ilhara as we

neared Cappadocia. But we were

in for a pleasant surprise

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ We had also expected arabic script on

road signs but fortunately as we were

driving ourselves the script was 'Roman'.

We still didn't know how to pronounce it

but we could find it on a map!!

But a bigger surprise was the remarkable standard of the roads. Even secondary roads such as this near Nevsehir in Cappadocia (left) was four lane and on a diversion away from a secondary road towards the Mount Hasan volcano (right) the road was tarmaced.

Even approaching and crossing the Taurus Mountains it was the same story. And as you will have noticed there has not been one other vehicle in any of these shots. Idyllic driving conditions

After a colourful first three days we approached the most eagerly anticipated section of the trip - the volcanic formations often known as the "Fairy Chimneys" of Cappadocia.

Cappadocia - the prime target

The volcanic erosions of Cappadocia (Kapadokya) exceeded all expectations.

The formations were created by erosion of 300 ft of ash and lava layers deposited by two spectacular volcanoes thirty miles apart - the 13,000 ft Erciyes seen here behind Uchisar castle and 11,000 ft Mt Hasan seen here behind the village of Ilhara

Some of the erosion produced normal, albeit spectacular, formations

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But others were far from normal. For some reason in many places erosion produced towering columns with a soft 'tuff' main stem and a hard volcanic lava rock top. The results were startling......

Some (above) defied gravity but the most eye watering were these....

Beyond the shapes generated by natural erosion many of the formations had been further eroded by the actions of man.

Take these Klu Klux Klan?? numbers for instance___________________________

Simple crude caves such as these in Goreme (below left) are added to as in the honeycomb rock at the Castle at Uchisar..... (right)

....producing areas of habitation as left below and ultimately cave based villages (below right).

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The hotel itself - the Museum Hotel at Uchisar illustrates the combination with cave bedrooms, bathrooms and hallway

On a more modest scale Jacky stands

outside a smart cave house

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Did we have a disappointment in Cappadocia? Yes, just one. On the way south to the coast we tried to get close to the 13,000 ft volcano Mt Erciyes but with cloud gathering the only view we could get was this final shot of the area with the twin peak just visible to the right above the clouds (above the right hand extremity of the triple direction sign) Even this seemed dramatic typifying Cappadocia which turned out to be one of the most remarkable and geologically spectacular locations we have ever seen
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