On Monday morning we were up before six to meet our six thirty taxi to the airport. We’d gone to bed about midnight so it didn’t take much to feel tired again after waking up. 

The taxi was late by about ten minutes (because the previous booking he had hadn’t work up) but he arrived and zoomed us through Tel Aviv. He was chatty. He also had a 52-year-old gay brother he was telling us about – and showed us a video of him, without his shirt on, doing pull-ups. He had an eight-pack. I’m thirty-five. I don’t even have two…

We arrived at Ben Gurion airport, expecting trouble. A friend from Sydney took two hours to get through security and had things taken out of his bag and posted back separately. Like many things on this trip, expectations were misleading. 

We checked into our Turkish Airlines flight and despite being on separate tickets, the woman at the check-in counter gave us our boarding passes for both flights and checked our baggage through to Nevsehir. Talk about helpful!

Security also was quick and we were in the lounge in no time. Our flight left just before ten; we ate a good meal on the two-hour flights. I read my book; Glen wrote on his blog. We then landed in Istanbul, went through border control, and walked over to the domestic terminal to wait the four hours until our next flight. Luckily we had somewhere to sit.

The flight from Istanbul to Nevsehir took about an hour. We landed at a tiny airport in green countryside. Such a treat to see some greenery after all the desert of Israel. Our luggage almost got lost; we went to the domestic side of this two-room airport but our luggage (along with a bunch of other people’s) went to the international. The driver was waiting for us out the front and so we set off with about eight other people.

Everyone else got dropped off first but this gave us time to see the landscape change from plains to hills. We saw our first fairy chimneys and in the dying light the rock turned a salmon colour. We drove through a busy town, which probably would have been a better choice in terms of options for food, shopping and accessibility, but the hotel we did choose – Yunak Evleri – is gorgeous and our room is built inside the rock.

We checked in, mildly worried that there’d be a problem because we requested a single double bed, rather than two separate ones, but there seemed to be no issue. In fact, we were upgraded to a suite, which is bigger than you’d expect a room carved into the side of a mountain to be.

We had dinner in the restaurant (I think all of our dinners are going to be in the restaurant) and then went to bed. Glen declared that tomorrow would be a rest day…but we’ll see how we go.