Family Travel Concierge: Our Turkish Adventure

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Last week my wife and I traveled to Turkey. It was an amazing trip and Turkey exceeded all our expectations with its history going back thousands and thousands of years, rich culture, delicious food, and super friendly people. Here is the diary of our trip!

July 20
Flew to Turkey via Barcelona

July 21
On the way to Turkey we had a rather long stopover in Barcelona. Our friends recommended an excellent cafe near Playa Catalunya, Granja Dulcinea so we decided to check it out; the hot chocolate was amazing!

Istanbul was another short stopover as we were flying to Cappadocia. Our luggage didn't come from Barcelona (oops), however nothing could spoil our day trip to Cappadocia!

By midnight we arrived at our cool cave hotel in Cappadocia, the Gamirasu Cave Hotel!

July 22
We started our day with exploring the Kaymakli Underground City. According to the Turkish Department of Culture, these ancient caves were first built in the 7th-8th centuries and was used in the Byzantine era for protection from Muslim Arabs during the Arab-Byzantine wars (780-1180). Throughout history, the underground city was used by people to escape persecution from the Ottoman Empire. When the Christian inhabitants of the region were expelled in 1923, the tunnels were fully abandoned.

Visited beautiful fairy chimneys — at Pigeon Valley, one of Turkey's most beautiful landscapes. The unique rock formations, known as fairy chimneys, are made from wind and water erosion on soft volcanic rock, rise high from the valley floor like chimneys and are dotted in their tops with birdhouses.

After seeing the chimneys, we had anther home style lunch at the Bizim Ev Restorant Avanos; we couldn't be more pleased with the food.

Back from our Cappadocia trip, we are off to Istanbul!

In Istanbul we stayed at a very nice family run boutique hotel, Osmanhan Hotel. The customer service was excellent, the accomodations cozy, and the hotel was centrally located in the historic heart of Istanbul.

July 23
During the first half of the day, we took a Jewish Heritage tour. We visited the oldest Ahrida, the largest Nove Shalom, an artistic Schneidertempel synagogue and an interesting Jewish Museum.