Red Tour and Turkish Night

I must continue this process as I had mentioned the Red Tour, and it was interesting and worthy of a separate post.  I will keep it simple and just a few pictures, so here goes:  The Red Tour was a bus trip around the area of Goreme and Avanos.  Goreme, the town we were staying in, and Avanos, the potters town only ten kilometers away.
The first stop was of the citadel at Ortahisar, which we didn't climb unless we went on another day to explore it.  It was enough to look from the distance.

This camel's owner wanted one lire to photograph it, and five lire to climb aboard. He got neither, and the camel was having an easy day of it.

The view across the road.  Next stop was a valley of cave churches, but we couldn't take any photos inside so we will just put in one or two to show the forms.

Off to a valley of more amazing forms in the landscape.

Then off to a pottery in Avanos, but a lot more of that later in another blog.  We were also treated to a visit to a carpet shop where the sales pitch was smooth and   well rehersed, (being repeated many times daily), but ultimately disappointing for them.  Our group was impressed by the carpets, but completely unmoved to put our hands in our pockets.   You do feel a bit set up on these coach trips where you are driven from place to place to see the sights, including large businesses anticipating a captive audience of potential customers.  The women who were demonstrating how they made the carpets were very skilled, and it always amuses and annoys me that the women do the work and the men make the money from their work.

We were taken to yet another valley of fairy chimneys, but these didn't have any people living in them.  They looked like people though....or crowds of people. I couldn't get enough photos of them.

I can see women ... Turkish women (because they wear scarves and coats, even in the summer months!).... 

To round off our time in Goreme, here are a few pictures of our hostel, the streets and our friend Faith, who was one of the managers....

Peri Cave Hostel.

..

Our last night in Goreme - views over the valley at sunset.

and a blurry one of the other manager Halice, who took us up to a view point on the last night of our stay with them, for a glass of wine.  He didn't have any, as it is Ramazan, but it was a fine drop of his favourite red wine.

I'm going to include some pictures we took of the Turkish Night we went to that evening, but they were mostly blurred.  It was a really entertaining night though.

We got a lift with Halice over to Avanos the next day...I had arranged to spend three days with the potters in the Guray Pottery over there so we stayed in the town.  That's the subject of the next post.