We stopped for lunch at a town along the Red River that is famous for it's red clay pottery. One of the local specialties is the pottery kebabs I mentioned earlier, where they cook meat and vegetables inside of a clay pot, then when it's done crack the top of the pottery off and pour it out. They were a bit pricey, but there was enough food that we split one pot between the 4 of us and it was very reasonable.
After lunch we visited a local artisan who makes pottery and tiles out of red and white clay and hand paints them all. He spoke barely any english, but in addition to Turkish he was fluent in french so when guide disappeared for a bit I did a bit of translating for Q&A. His specialty is decorating pottery with ancient Hittite designs of geometric patterns and animals.
Once we were back on the road and getting deeper into Cappadocia we began to encounter the sandstone cliffs and formations that the region is famous for. I'll leave those pictures for the next post, as that's when we got to go back through the places we drove quickly past and visit them in detail.
The one big stop we had this day was to explore the Kaymakli Underground City. They first started carving the city out of the sandstone in early Hittite times, and expanded it over time. There were many of these underground cities in the region, and they served as a refuge to hide in when armies or mauraders attacked the regular towns. Archaeologists think the Kaymakli one could support 3000-4000 people. Despite them only having uncovered the top few layers of it, crawling through the complicated warren of tunnels and rooms is very fun.
I had a very early morning lined up, so after checking in and having dinner I went to bed early.
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