This morning we had a knock at the door, and it was poor old Mum who managed to make it up the steps to tell us she isn't well and has come down with vomiting and gastro and won't be coming with us to the Underground city. I'm so glad that we are here for a few days as there is no way she could travel like this. We leave her with dry bread and a can of lemonade as she crawls back into bed. We travel on the mini bus and already, we have a good system of rotation on the bus. The city is amazing and we make our way down to the depths of this place. The Christians at the time lived down here to shelter from the weather and wild animals and a raid by the Arabs in the medieval raids. It has a little church and food preparation areas and a school. A few of us brave it to go down into the tunnels where you have to crawl to get through, and it's a bit claustrophobic at times. We see this valley and they look like a huge penis. Tub, one of the guys on the tour, is a walking encyclopedia and he nicknames it "the valley of the pricks". We also visit a place where hermits used to live in peaked cave dwellings, and this is a place where they didn't want to have contact with the outside world. Milroy, I spotted some black and white chickens and I'm sure they play for Collingwood. This afternoon we have free time. They have a great laundry service anywhere in Turkey - you just drop the bag off and it comes back in the afternoon. Tonight we head to this fantastic restaurant and we had to pre-order what meat we wanted. We enjoy a local dish called "testi kebab" - they are a slowed cooked casserole served in a sealed terracotta pot which is broken open upon serving. I of course had a go at breaking my own, and only a little piece ended up in my food. We had a private room and our host was a real character. Off to check on Mum, who is slightly better, as she has slept all day. We get up to leave Goreme and set off for our next stop which is Konya, a town of 1,000,000 people, so you can imagine it's a little overwhelming. We have to wear long pants and long tops as it's quite conservative here. We get taken to try a simple restaurant which only serves two things - a main and a dessert. We of course eat "tirit" which is a lamb served with small bread pieces underneath, yoghurt, melted butter and a tomato sauce. It's a real light weight meal!! Poor Mum is chomping on her roll with Vegemite that we made at breakfast. On the way, Ozan points out the Turkish Red Crescent and they are running a soup kitchen set-up. I don't want to upset anyone at work but I may shine with a few Red Cross shots!! Ozan tells me that the Red Cross has had the feeling of being a bit corrupted, which I was sad to hear, but he said it was at the time of the big earthquake and they seem a little better now. We head off to a museum, which has the tomb of the great Sufi poet Rumi, who was known as Mevlana and the founder of the Mevlevi dervish sect of Islam, known to us as the whirling dervish. It was really interesting. If you wanted to join them, you had to sit in the same position for 2 weeks and if they thought you could move on, they would accept you for the long training ahead. If you didn't make it, they turned your shoes away from you. A little devastating after 2 weeks!! The dervishes don't sleep - they have a rod that sits under the chin so you lean on it to rest. We go inside the mosque where the tombs are, and a lovely Turkish lady offers us all these mints that are chalky and taste of lemon. The Turks are so generous. We finish the night with our group and no Ozan, but he recommends a lovely home family cafe and Mum even has a little bite to eat. We are served a special family juice that is a deep red and she won't tell us the ingredients but they are all from her garden. The father plays the flute and he is very proud and we enjoy the music.
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