Week 5 + 6.5: Cappadocia - Kas - Antalya - Rome - Amalfi Coast (Sorrento)

TL:DR; Chilling in a cave hotel in Cappadocia watching balloons take off in the morning. 1 week of diving in Kas. Scooter adventures in Rome and checking out the Amalfi coast. 

No video this time, taking a break from editing :-)

Week 5+6.5 update:

It feels like it has been an eternity since we left Istanbul for Cappadocia....

Our transfer to our cave hotel in the side of a mountain was pretty seamless. Cappadocia is a lot like the badlands in Alberta. There are lots of cave houses and hotels built into the sides of the landscape though! Göreme, the town we were staying in, had quite a touristy feel to begin with, but it definitely grew on me after a while and felt quite charming by the time we were leaving. 

Sarah came down with a bit of a cold, and since we had some extensive diving plans for Kas (our next city) she spent most of her Cappadocia time resting, coming out of our cave for some small adventures like fancy dinners or morning views of the balloons. 

I rented a scooter and went cruising around on some solo adventures. There were some small towns not too far away where you can explore vast underground cave cities (up to 8 stories deep). Some of the passageways required me to be fully crouched over to make it through. There were some moments of anxiety when I considered what kind of situation I would be in if the whole thing collapsed, or if there was an emergency and we needed to evacuate... but all was well :-)

I continued scootering around, taking a long way to get back. Travelling on a 150cc scooter on a black asphalt highway at high noon in 25C in a deserted, sandy area was an interesting experience. It was a long day and I was quite glad to find refuge in our little cave at the end of the day. 

We woke up early one morning to go watch all of the balloons taking off on their daily trip over the area. It was really quite amazing watching all the balloons fill up, take off and peacefully float across the landscape. It seems like a pretty lucrative business to have a 16-20 people at a minimum of €220/person taking off on a 1hr flight. It definitely got me thinking a bit about some potential future entrepreneurial ventures...

We left Cappadocia after 3 days and headed for Kas, a small diving town on the SW coast of Turkey. This was a super cool town where our only plan was to go diving everyday. Sarah finished her PADI Open Water certification, allowing her to dive up to 18m. I had finished mine 6 years ago in Egypt, so after a half day refresher, I was diving up to 30m twice a day. The whole experience was super mellow and laid back. A quick breakfast at home, on the boat at 9am to enjoy some nice coffee while the crew prepped everything and then we would head out to our dive spot. We’d do a morning dive lasting about 40min, and have an hour or so to relax or snorkel around before going on a 2nd dive. We would be back on shore around 3pm and have a nap at home before cooking some food and enjoying a beautiful sunset dinner on our patio overlooking the city. What more could you ask for???

Sarah and I were able to dive together for her last 2 dives. Before our very last dive, Sarah said she really wanted to see a sea turtle, and I mentioned it would be cool to see a bearded fireworm (I think sea slugs and worms are super cool to watch underwater!). We got to see both of them on the last dive!! It was exhilarating... I also discovered just how much water can get into your dive mask when you keep smiling and laughing underwater.

We got into a bit of a routine of relaxing by independently watching some Netflix on our devices in the evenings. We noticed we weren’t feeling as connected as before, and I tried just “being bored” for a change instead of looking to fill my time with some sort of entertainment. It was amazing how quickly we started to chat about little things and big plans. Just creating the room and opportunity for conversation (without expectations or a planned time to connect) was all we needed to feel close again. I keep running into these articles on the importance of being bored. I really believe it now both for the good of relationships (with friends, family, significant others) as well as on my own. 

Kas was also where I discovered the awesomeness of a simple dinner. As my culinary experience has evolved over the years, I’ve felt like every meal I cook has to be extraordinary, and complete with all kinds of layers of complexity. We had a bunch of simple dinners, that took very little time to prepare, but tasted amazing, and gave us more time to just chill and hangout. I’ll definitely be striving for a bit more simplicity in my cooking (at least sometimes!). 

From Kas we had a 1 night layover in Antalya, where we participated in a polish folk dance workshop during their old town festival (who knew!). We had an early flight out the next morning and were heading to Italy!

We landed in Rome and were feeling up for an adventure, so we headed into the city and rented a scooter to try to see as much as possible in a day. We checked out the Vatican, had some pizza and espresso, went to the Trevi fountain to do a coin toss, and spent some time at the Pantheon. We were able to enjoy some street art along the way too. We got back to the train station 5 hours later to drop off the scooter and jumped on a train heading for the Amalfi coast where we’ve been for the last 4 days. 

Italy has been super relaxed. Everyone seems so friendly and smiley here all the time. The towns on the coast are all pretty small, so there are a lot of people that know each other and are constantly saying hi, or poking some fun at each other. We rented a scooter to drive down the coast (super crazy, tight, winding road on the side of a cliff) which was a great idea. It was exhilarating and really quite easy to pull over wherever to enjoy the view. It was also super fun to blend in with the local scooter traffic and casually pass people around blind corners....

We did another great cooking class here, learning to make ravioli, home-made pasta, almond cookies and tomato sauce. We were then able to enjoy all of our labour overlooking the town of Positano while the sun set over the water. 

We did a boat tour of the coast the next day, which was great to see things from a different perspective. I can’t believe so much can be built on cliffs like this...

Although we were supposed to head to Cinque Terre next, the weather was looking quite bad (15C with rain) for the entire week we would be there, so we decided to extend our stay here until we leave through Pisa to Marrakech. 

We may be looking into some climbing on the coast, some more scoter adventures, and potentially another cooking class!

We are both starting to look forward to return home, have our own space, enjoy some routines and spend time with friends and family again. In the meantime though, we will keep trying to squeeze as much out of the time we have!!

Ciao!

Adam and Sarah