The Penn Stater Magazine

A Sneak Peek at Cappadocia

May 18, 2011 at 6:07 pm Tina Hay 1 comment

The Legendary Turkey trip officially ended in Antalya, but 13 of the 19 Penn State travelers signed up for the optional extension: a trip to the beautiful region called Cappadocia.

Cappadocia—or Kapadokya, as the Turkish spell it—is an area in central Turkey where the landscape is the star. It’s a magical place of weird and beautiful rock formations, ancient underground cities, and hot-air balloons. For some of us, it was the part of the trip we were looking forward to the most.

We arrived in Cappadocia (pronounced “kappa-dokey-uh” with a long “o”) pretty late in the day, getting to our hotel in the village of Uçhisar around sunset, so there wasn’t much to see. But the next morning I opened the curtains of my hotel-room window and looked out to see the scene you see above: a mass ascension of hot-air balloons at dawn.

(By the way, I don’t know why WordPress seems to mush up the quality of photos so much. If you click on the photo above, you can see a larger and crisper version.)

I also took the photo below around the same time. It’s a shot of the hotel swimming pool in the pre-dawn light, with the Uçhisar Castle—the big rock on the hill—visible in the background.

Those two views were enough to tell me that our two days in Cappadocia were going to be pretty special. More on our Cappadocia adventures tomorrow.

Tina Hay, editor

Entry filed under: Alumni Association. Tags: Cappadocia, Kapadokya, Legendary Turkey, Uçhisar, Uçhisar Castle, WordPress photo quality.