Goreme

There is no beach life here. Goreme sits on the high, dry plateau of central Anatolia, a long day's drive from the nearest sea, and the Kizilirmak river near Avanos is for looking at, not for swimming. If you want to swim, use a hotel pool, and some cave hotels have one. Travellers who want the sea usually add a few days on the Mediterranean or Aegean coast to a Cappadocia trip.

Eating in Goreme is simple and mostly aimed at visitors. The main street and the lanes around it have terrace restaurants and kebab houses, and most offer the regional dish, testi kebab, a meat stew cooked in a sealed clay pot that is cracked open at the table. You will also find manti dumplings, gozleme flatbreads made by women at roadside stalls, and breakfasts on cave-hotel terraces.

Cappadocia has an old winemaking tradition from its volcanic soils, and local reds and whites are easy to find. Even so, the village is small and its menus look much alike after a couple of nights. People come for the valleys, not for the food.

The village's great sight is the Goreme Open Air Museum, a short walk out of the centre. It is a monastic valley of rock-cut Byzantine churches, chapels and refectories, and the best of them keep vivid frescoes. The Dark Church, where little light gets in, has the richest colours. The nearby Tokali Church has some of the finest painting in the region.

Around that there is the village itself, with fairy-chimney dwellings, dovecotes and old houses cut into the soft tuff, and several more chapels hidden in the surrounding valleys. You can see it all well in a day or two. The underground cities, fortress villages and other monastic sites around Cappadocia take separate outings.

Goreme goes to bed early. The balloons launch before dawn, so most visitors are asleep soon after dinner. A few restaurant terraces and small bars serve beer, local wine and raki into the evening, and watching the lights over the rock formations is about as lively as it gets. There are no clubs and nothing runs late.

Goreme sits right inside the eroded volcanic landscape that Cappadocia is famous for, and that one landscape is the whole of its outdoor offer. Rose, Red, Love, Pigeon and Zemi valleys start at the edge of the village. You can walk them for hours among cones, pinnacles and ridges of pale and pink tuff, past dovecotes, orchards and forgotten chapels. At sunrise dozens of hot-air balloons drift over the valleys, the region's signature experience. Horse riding, mountain biking and ATV tracks use the same ground.

Beyond the valleys the range is narrow. There is no coast, little forest and no water to paddle on. The Ihlara gorge, with its long riverside walk, and the ski slopes of Mount Erciyes near Kayseri are both more than an hour's drive away. Spring and autumn are the seasons for walking. Midsummer is hot and shadeless by late morning, and in winter snow can dust the rocks.

Goreme is the natural base for the whole Cappadocian heritage circuit, and most of it is less than an hour away. The underground cities of Kaymakli and Derinkuyu go many storeys down into the rock and once sheltered whole communities. Uchisar's rock citadel overlooks the region, Zelve and Cavusin are abandoned cave villages, and Avanos is a riverside town of potters still working at the wheel.

Urgup and Mustafapasa have the region's finest stone mansions from the old Greek community. Soganli and the Selime monastery add more rock churches. Kayseri, about an hour away, brings Seljuk mosques and a lively bazaar city. The list is long, but much of it is variations on rock-cut heritage.

Older children often love Goreme. They can sleep in a cave room, crawl through the tunnels of an underground city, ride horses or ATVs through the valleys and watch the balloons at dawn. The village is small, calm and safe, and Turkish families and hoteliers are warm towards children.

It works less well with toddlers. There are no attractions made for children, valley paths are steep and uneven with unfenced drops, buggies struggle on the lanes, and balloon operators set minimum ages. A short stay built around a few outings suits most families better than a long one.

The village itself is tiny and easy on foot. The Open Air Museum and several valley trailheads are walking distance from the centre. Beyond that it gets harder. Local buses link Goreme with Uchisar, Avanos, Urgup and Nevsehir, but they are slow and sparse, and the underground cities, Ihlara and the outlying villages are realistically reached by organised tour, taxi or a hired car.

Many visitors combine a day or two of guided tours with walking. Others hire a car, scooter or bicycle to move between villages on their own schedule. The nearest airports are at Nevsehir and Kayseri, both about an hour away, with transfers timed to flights.

Shopping in Goreme is mostly souvenirs: ceramic bowls, fairy-chimney ornaments, evil-eye charms, scarves and dried fruit along the main street. The region's real crafts are hand-knotted carpets and kilims, often sold in large showrooms that tours stop at, and the red-clay pottery of nearby Avanos, where you can watch it being made. There are no boutiques, malls or markets beyond a small weekly village market. Buy a rug or a pot here if it appeals, and leave serious shopping for elsewhere.

Goreme can be done cheaply or expensively, and the gap is wide. Simple guesthouses, hostels in old cave houses, local buses, gozleme stalls and walking the valleys keep a basic stay modest. The things most visitors come for cost more. Boutique cave hotels with terraces over the rocks are priced well above the Turkish norm, restaurant menus are set for visitors, and the dawn balloon flight is the biggest single expense of many trips. Guided tours of the region and site entry fees add up over a few days.

Live performance here is staged for visitors. In the evenings you can join a Turkish night, a dinner show of folk dances and belly dancing held in a large cave venue. There is also the Sema ceremony of the whirling dervishes, performed in an old caravanserai near Avanos and the more rewarding of the two. Beyond these there is no theatre, concert hall or regular live music scene.

Goreme is a calm place to spend time. Once the day tours have come back, the evenings are quiet, and long breakfasts on a terrace looking out over the rock formations set an unhurried pace. A few Turkish hammams in the village offer the classic steam, scrub and foam massage, and some of the better cave hotels have small spas and pools.

There is no historic bathing culture to speak of, and the pre-dawn balloon starts and packed tour days work against rest. To soak in real thermal water you have to drive to the spa towns further across Nevsehir province.