But the first couple of months we were here we were busy settling in and then the weather turned rather wintery - which is definitely not the best time to visit Cappadocia. And in our defence, L and I visited about 4.5 years ago when we were on holiday backpacking in Turkey so we have been before.
However, today we finally made it across to Göreme, a village in Cappadocia which is surrounded by valleys perfect for hiking. With two small children, we chose one of the shortest valleys to walk - Kılıçlar Vadisi, or 'Swords Valley'. It's only a couple of miles long but more than made up for its short length with an impressively long (apparently about 300m) and rather narrow tunnel and a good section of the valley being more akin to a super-narrow gorge, with rocks towering above us.
In retrospect, it was probably a slightly challenging walk for us to manage with a nearly 4 year old and a nearly 2 year old and me 7 months pregnant, but we all loved it (although for J and S, going through the tunnel once was enough...). We reached the end, explored a little and then had a picnic lunch (which had been a significant motivating factor for J). It was lovely to get out into nature and to have the opportunity to point out things like wild flowers, butterflies and even lizards to the boys. And while we had thought that L might have needed to walk back and bring the car round to us, the boys even had enough energy that we all managed to do the walk back up the valley to the car again - going up was definitely easier than going down!
Swords Valley
This was one of the steepest/narrowest bits
Classic Cappadocia scenery
View from our picnic spot at the end of the valley, with some of the rock caves visible.
We sat eating our sandwiches looking out across at this scenery, L and I thinking that the last time we came to Göreme we could never have imagined that 4.5 years later we'd be coming on a day trip from our home an hour away, with our two boys and another on the way. God has been so good to us.
We finished off with a quick trip into Göreme to get our first ice creams of the year, realising that despite it being only early April we had all managed to get very slightly sunburned. Oops. And then headed home, with both J and S fast asleep in the car within 5 minutes of setting off - definitely the sign of a successful day out!
