Don’t drive, relax! Go at your own pace!
This is a one day private tour with a driver. You get to the sights easily, no guiding though. If you have only one day in Cappadocia, this tour is highly-recommended. The duration of the tour is approximately eight hours and it covers all the important sights of Cappadocia region.
* Duration: 8 hours
* Starts: Goreme, Turkey
* Trip Category: Cultural & Theme Tours >> Cultural Tours
Don’t drive, relax! Go at your own pace!
This is a one day private tour with a driver. You get to the sights easily, no guiding though. If you have only one day in Cappadocia, this tour is highly-recommended. The duration of the tour is approximately eight hours and it covers all the important sights of Cappadocia region.
Itinerary
This is a typical itinerary for this product
Stop At: Devrent Valley, Devrent Mevkii No:1 Urgup Yolu, 50500 Turkey
Devrent Valley, also known as “Imagination Valley”, is the most surreal-looking landscape. This is one part of Cappadocia that really makes people feel they are on a different planet. Thousands of years of wind, rain and extreme temperature changes have worn the beautifully colored rocks into strange and wonderful animal and human shapes that make you think a modern sculptor has been living in the valley. You are wrong! You have just been introduced to the work of nature’s greatest artist, Erosion.
Duration: 30 minutes
Stop At: Pasabag, Urgup Turkey
Pashabagi means “The Pasha’s Vineyard”, a name it received after the Byzantine Greek population left the region. In Seljuk and Ottoman times, it was called “Papaz’in Bagi” or “The Monk’s Vineyard” because Christian hermits chose to locate hermit cells and churches in these three-headed pinnacles symbolic of the Holy Trinity. Perhaps such symbolismhelped these monks develop a greater understanding of God. This peaceful, attractive valley is famous for its three-headed fairy chimneys, and it’s possible to see all the stages in the formation of fairy chimneys at this spot. The vineyards surrounding these natural wonders are still cultivated by locals (you can taste the grapes from September on), and trees such as apricot, apple, pear, quince, cherry, mulberry and walnut are plentiful.
Duration: 30 minutes
Stop At: Avanos, Avanos, Cappadocia
The red, iron-ore bearing clay deposited by the longest river in Turkey, The Kizilirmak, or “Red River”, known to classical scholars as The Halys, has been used to make pottery in Avanos for thousands of years. During the second millennium BCE, Avanos was inhabited by Assyrian traders, and it was later taken over by the Hittites, who called the river the “Marassantiya”. Some of the techniques and designs used by potters today date back to this period. At one time every house had a potter’s wheel, and no family would give theirdaughter in marriage if the groom could not make pots! Today, the best of the ceramics and tiles on sale in Istanbul and other major cities are made here. You can watch potters spinning their traditional kick-wheels with their feet, and even try throwing a pot yourself.
Duration: 1 hour
Stop At: Goreme Open-Air Museum, Merkez, Muze Cd., Goreme 50180 Turkey
The world’s most important Byzantine cave churches are found in these once remote valleys where monks and nuns pursued monastic life from the 3rd century on. Saint Basil, one of the three Cappadocian Fathers of the Church and Bishop of Caesarea (Kayseri) who first formulated the rules for monastic life later adapted in the west by Saint Benedict, if not familiar with the place himself, directly influenced the lifestyle of the monastic orders in these valleys. Here you can see the best preserved in-situ Byzantine cave wall paintings and frescos from the Iconoclastic period through to the end of Seljuk rule. Icons with scenes from the Old Testament and the New Testament above portraits of Church Fathers and saints depict the structure of the Byzantine universe. The best examples, the Dark Church and the Buckle Church, should not be missed.
Duration: 1 hour 20 minutes
Pass By: Goreme Panorama, Uchisar Yolu uzeri 1.km, Goreme 50180 Turkey
Only the exterior of the location will be visited.
This is the best panoramic viewpoint from which to see the complete view of Goreme valley and Goreme village: fairy chimneys, rock formations and cave houses. Goreme means “can’t see”, but this is the one place where you can “see” it all! The village is full of fairy chimneys, some of which have been converted into homes by cutting caves out of the soft volcanic rock.
Pass By: Uchisar Castle, Uchisar Turkey
Only the exterior of the location will be visited.
This tall rock, the highest point of the Goreme region, is a 25-floor beehive of cave rooms forming an underground-type city reaching into the sky. It was used as a citadel during Roman, Byzantine and Seljuk times, but more recently in the Ottoman period the upper rooms were converted into dovecotes, the guano being essential for the fertilization of the region’s phosphorus-free land. The other old houses built around this fortress were used as homes until 20 years ago when modern style houses with plumbing were built in the village.
Pass By: Pigeon Valley, Uchisar KasabasI Nevşehir Kapadokya, Goreme 50240 Turkey
Only the exterior of the location will be visited.
The viewpoint over this awesome valley, named for the number of dovecotes carved out of the rocks, affords a spectacular view of old abandoned cave homes and old Greek houses of Uchisar. Villagers still keep pigeons for their guano, the best fertilizer for the local tufaceous soil. Pigeon guano is different from other natural fertilizers because it does not encourage weeds.
