Cave Hotel in Cappadoccia

We arrived in Cappadoccia after our very early flight from Fethiye and boarded the Turkish Airlines shuttle bus to the Neveshir city center, as directed by the owner of the hotel.(It might be worthwhile mentioning here that Fethiye was tourist friendly and we hadn’t yet learned how to dial Turkish numbers on our cell). The shuttle dropped us in the middle of the “city center” which to me was a very busy street with three lanes of traffic in each direction. (Also noteworthy, we are not backpackers. Before this trip I had romantic ideas about what it would have been like had J and I packed up and went to Europe for a month in our early twenties. All of those visions have been set right and I now realize that I would not have enjoyed that nomadic, hippy-esqe holiday. I’ll take flying between cities (Istanbul connections and all) over over-night buses and communal hostel toilets any day. They do say older and wiser, right?)

Back to the story, we get out of the shuttle and the driver unloads our three roller-board suitcases (Yes, I said three – See note on backpacking above). The driver can see that we are clearly out of place so he finds a gentleman that speaks a little English and from the conversation we gather that we should call our hotel and tell them we are in front of the old hospital. The English speaker continues on and J and I are left standing very conspicuously on the busy street.

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These were our options:
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Option 1 – find and walk to the real city center, because clearly this is not it

Option 2 – figure out how to dial Turkey numbers on our cell and call the owner of the hotel who instructed us to take the shuttle to the city center where he would pick us up

Option 3 – hail a cab and tell him where we’re going (although we aren’t sure if we have the

address)

Option 4 – Email the owner our location and hope that he is at his computer to field our email
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We chose option 4 while continuing to work on option 2. After a good 45 minutes the owner pulled up and we were on our way to the Cave Hotel. (Note: we still couldn’t dial Turkish numbers)
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The Cave Hotel is a very old structure that was used as a family home until five years ago when the owner bought it and renovated it to be a hotel. Most of the rooms are carved into stone and operate as cave rooms. The rooms need no air conditioning as they stay cool and constant year round. It was an interesting experience and the place had a very real and local feel to it as the owner and other locals would sit and chat in the open air garden/courtyard just outside our room.