Cappadocia at Sunrise, Just the Two of Us

The alarm went off at 4:40 a.m., and for a long moment neither of us moved. The cave room was pitch black and cold enough that we could see our breath in the light of a phone screen. Then, somewhere outside, a burner roared, a long low whoosh like a dragon clearing its throat, and Ava sat bolt upright. “They’re flying,” she said. “They’re actually flying.”

I wanted the photo. Ava wanted the breakfast. Cappadocia, generous as it is, gave us both before 7 a.m.: a basket ride over valleys of fairy chimneys, a pink sunrise, and the quietest, longest breakfast of our married lives on a terrace where nobody said a word for twenty minutes.

We spent four nights in central Turkey’s balloon country for our anniversary, and we’ve had more questions about this trip than any other. So here’s the whole thing: how we booked it, what went wrong, and why we’d go back tomorrow.

In this story6 sections

1. Why Cappadocia, and why the two of us
2. The balloon ride, minute by minute
3. The cave hotel, and the breakfast
4. How we'd book it again
5. Days on foot, evenings on the ridge
6. Getting there and getting the timing right

Why Cappadocia, and why the two of us

Cappadocia is a high plateau in central Anatolia where ancient volcanic ash hardened into soft rock, and wind and water have carved it into cones, pillars and honeycombed cliffs. People have been digging homes, churches and entire underground cities into that rock for well over a thousand years. Today many of those carved rooms are hotels, and the sky above them fills with balloons almost every calm morning of the year.

It’s a place built for couples who like a slow pace. There’s no beach to rush to, no sprawling city to conquer. The days organize themselves around light: sunrise from the basket or the rooftop, midday in the cool of a cave church or a long lunch, sunset on a ridge with a bottle of local wine. We walked a lot, napped shamelessly and went to bed before 10 every night.

The balloon ride, minute by minute

Hotel pickup came at 5:10 a.m. in a minivan of sleepy couples. At the launch field, crews were inflating dozens of balloons with giant fans and then burners, the envelopes rising off the ground like waking animals. We had tea and a simit while the pilot gave a short safety briefing: hold the rope handles, bend your knees in the landing position, and don’t lean out for photos.

Lift-off is shockingly gentle. You don’t feel it so much as notice that the ground has gone. For about an hour we drifted over Love Valley and Red Valley, sometimes skimming low enough to see swallow nests in the rock, sometimes climbing high enough to count more than a hundred other balloons spread out in the pastel light. The sun came up over Mount Erciyes, the snow-capped volcano on the horizon, and our pilot, a quiet man with forty years of mornings behind him, simply turned the burners off and let us hang there in silence.

We landed on a farm road with a soft bump and a cheer, and the ground crew poured glasses of sparkling wine into plastic flutes. It’s a little cheesy. We loved it.

For a full minute the burners went quiet and the only sound in the sky was Ava laughing.

Noah Parker

The cave hotel, and the breakfast

We stayed in Göreme, the village at the center of the balloon zone, in a small family-run cave hotel built into a hillside. Our room was a carved arch of pale stone with a wooden bed, kilim rugs and a deep niche in the wall where a lamp threw soft light across the ceiling. It was beautiful and, as everyone warned us, it ran cold at night, even in October. The staff brought an extra heater the moment we asked. Ask on the first night; don’t be brave about it.

And then there was the breakfast. After the balloon landed and we were dropped back at the hotel, it was barely 7:30. We climbed to the rooftop terrace and found a table already set: tomatoes and cucumbers, white cheese and olives, honey still in the comb, warm bread, eggs cooked with peppers and spices, endless little glasses of black tea. Below us, the last few balloons were drifting down into the valleys. Nobody else was up there yet. We ate for well over an hour and barely spoke, which for us is a minor miracle.

Days on foot, evenings on the ridge

We had expected the balloon ride to be the highlight. In the end it was the walking. The valleys around Göreme are threaded with dusty footpaths, and you can wander for hours through rock formations that look like something from another planet.

• Rose and Red Valley. Our favorite walk. It’s about two and a half miles through pink-tinted rock to a hilltop viewpoint, and sunset there is free, beautiful and much calmer than the paid terraces.
• Göreme Open-Air Museum. A cluster of rock-cut churches with frescoes that are centuries old. Go at opening to beat the tour buses. Tickets are about $20 per person, and the extra fee for the Dark Church is worth it.
• Uçhisar Castle. A towering rock outcrop riddled with old chambers. The climb to the top is short and the 360-degree view is the best in the region.
• An underground city. We visited Kaymaklı, carved several levels down into the rock. Not for the claustrophobic, but fascinating.

Our last night, we booked a table at a small restaurant with a candlelit terrace and ordered testi kebab, a slow-cooked stew sealed in a clay pot that the waiter cracks open at the table with a little ceremony. It’s touristy. It’s also delicious, and Ava filmed the whole thing.

Getting there and getting the timing right

From the US, the easiest route is a nonstop to Istanbul (Turkish Airlines flies from several hubs, including New York, Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles), then a domestic flight of about an hour and a quarter to either Kayseri or Nevşehir. Kayseri has more flights; Nevşehir is closer. Most hotels arrange a shared shuttle to Göreme for about $10 to $15 per person, and the ride takes 45 minutes to an hour.

The best seasons are April to early June and September to October, with cool mornings and warm afternoons in the 60s and 70s °F (about 15–25 °C). Summer is hot and busy; winter is cold and often snowy, but balloon flights over a white landscape are spectacular if the weather cooperates. Turkey uses the lira, and while cards work almost everywhere, we kept some cash for tips and small shops. Check current entry rules for US passport holders before you book, as they have changed in recent years.

We came home with about four hundred balloon photos, and I’ll admit they’re good ones. But the picture neither of us can shake is the one we didn’t take: the rooftop at 7:30 a.m., two cups of tea going cold, the valleys going from pink to gold, and nothing at all to say. If you go, give yourselves that morning. The balloons will still be there tomorrow.