After touring Venice with my family, we flew to Cappadoccia, Turkey, via Istanbul. We stayed in one of the most unique hotels we have ever seen called, The Scared House. It was a converted Greek mansion that had cave rooms carved into the rock. Thanks to it being a slow week we were upgraded to a amazing room that came stocked with Turkish Delight and homemade cherry liquor. The food was beyond delicious. Our breakfast each morning was multiple courses and came with fresh squeezed juice and both hot and cold options. 
Having a lovely breakfast on the rooftop terrace and feeding the cats in the street our scraps!
To get a better view of the land we took a hot air balloon ride. We departed our hotel at 4:30 am and headed for the launching area with over one hundred other balloons. The balloons were much bigger than we expected and held about twenty people per basket. It was beautiful, peaceful and something that we will never forget. Our trip lasted about one hour and took us over 900 meters in the air.
On the last day in Cappadoccia we toured an underground city that was eight levels deep. This was the main hiding ground for the Christians where they were able to live completely cut off from outside engagement for over three months. It was very interesting to see how the planned, built and engineered their cave to serve a variety of purposes including cooking, living, a cemetery, animal facilities, toilets and fresh wind tunnels. Crawling through the tunnels gave us a new appreciation for this fascinating way of survival.
