April 22nd

Once we finally arrived in Turkey, we were quite tired from our long and interesting day of travel. We got out of bed in a Bedouin camp in Jordan at 6:00 a.m. and drove through the desert in the back of a jeep,  hopped on some camels and rode a very slow ride back to the town, took a taxi back to the airport with a socially impaired driver who chain smoked the whole 3 hours, took 2 more flights to get to Istanbul, Turkey and finally arrived  at our hotel at 11:30pm.

Today, in Istanbul, we visited the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, and the Basilica underground cisterns. It was very cool because the book Inferno was set in Istanbul and we could follow the path the character took in the book past the fountain, through the Sophia, and then to the underground water chambers across the street. 

Unfortunately, there were tons of tourists because of Easter and we had to wait in huge lineups to get into the sites.  The Blue Mosque is a Muslim mosque named for its blue tiles used in the interior. The spectacular Hagia Sophia was originally a Greek Church, famous for its massive dome on the roof which was very rare and impressive in 500 A.D. when it was built. 

The underground cisterns were used as a water filtration system for the great palace of Constantinople during the Roman times around 500 A.D.  The cistern is about 138m long by 65m wide, supported by 336 marble columns that are about 9 meters high each.  The pillar with the carved medusa heads, that was mentioned in the book, is also there.

The next day we visited the Grand Bazaar which is renowned for shopping and spices. There are over 3000 shops there.  It is one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world.  It covers 61 streets.

Next we went down to central Turkey to visit a very unusual area of soft rock formations called Cappadocia.  Starting in the second century,  people carved houses out of the rock.  Whole towns carved into the rocks acted as hiding places for Christians during early Roman times. 

In the 13^th century, the moguls invaded and started killing everyone and the building stopped.  We stayed in a hotel carved out of rock and it was very cool since the walls and ceiling were stone.  Up until about 30 years ago, locals lived in the stone houses, but after a very cold winter and a couple earthquakes, some of the cliffs collapsed and buried the homes underneath them.  Now it is illegal to live in them.

The next day we rented a car and drove to an underground city called Durinkuyu.  It was used for the same reason that the homes in the rocks were (safety), except the city held up to 30 000 people and went down to a depth of 300 feet and 8 levels.  Inside there were rooms, stables, kitchens, churches and a school for the children.  In some rooms, there was an ancient telephone where you basically shout up a hole that goes to the next floor.  We took a small, narrow, carved spiral staircase down to the bottom levels.  A huge vertical tunnel runs from the bottom of the underground city to the surface for ventilation.  Big round stones were in groves in the walls to be rolled into place to block off the tunnels if there was trouble. 

Dad says his camel picture taking is getting better and promises this is the last one (I hope).