2010 - Turkey - Day 9 - Konya, Cappadocia

A little about the tulip: The tulips originated in Turkey. The name of the flower is Lalah and it is a holy flower to the Turks. It has one bulb, one flower, and blooms one time a year. The name has the same letter and syllables as the one god, Allah. When a Dutch king came to visit Turkey he loved the tulips and asked to take some bulbs home to Holland. They were wrapped in a cloth that sounded like “tulip”, so that is where the name came from. We started our day driving around Konya and seeing some 12th century buildings. We saw an astronomy building and some mosques. There is also a tel (a hill with ruins underneath) that belonged to the ancient city of Iconium. There is now a 12th century mosque and a corner of a building that used to be a huge sultans palace. Now only a corner of the building remains. We then went to the Mevlana Museum. Mevlana was an important religious man in the Muslim faith. He had tolerance and love for all religions and people. It is also the home of the whirling dervishes. This building was the monastery where Mevlana and his followers lived. Now it is a burial place of Mevlana and many other prominent religious figures. There were lovely art pieces inside and calligraphy and many fancy old copies of the Koran. We then left Konya, traveling along the same route as the Silk Road in the ancient times. We have followed that road the past couple days, and will continue to follow it until we leave Cappodicia. Every 10-15 miles along the Silk Road were forts like hotels, for the merchants to stay in, called caravanserai. We stopped at a caravanserai about halfway between Konya and Cappodocia. It was a beautiful fort, much bigger and nicer than I imagined a traveler’s fort to look like. It had a little mosque in the center of a big square, and tall fortress walls surrounding it. There were bath rooms for men and woman and a huge stable for the camels. While there, I bought some T-shirts for my boys and Christa. Our lunch stop was an hour further. We bought some bread and tuna at a grocery store the night before, and had that for lunch. We arrived in Cappodicia around 3:30. We stopped at a lookout point over the valley first and took some pictures. I also bought a bracelet and necklace for me, and a couple small purses and a dagger. Then we went to the open air museum. That was a place of many dwellings and temples carved into the rock and mountainsides. Every where you look in this valley are caves and homes carved into the rock formations. It’s incredible. The place of the museum seemed to have several 11th and 13th century temples, so it must have been an important center place. One side of the gorge was where they kept pigeons for fertilizer. We spent 1.5 hours walking around these dwellings and temples. These caves were created by Christians beginning the 1-3rd centuries to escape and hide from persecution. They were used for at least 1,000 years. I bought some earrings fro my girls here before we left. After we left the open air museum, we drove a few minutes to see the fairy chimney stones. We spent 10 minutes there getting pictures. We then arrived at our hotel a little before 7:00 pm, had a buffet dinner at 7:30, and an early night to bed.