One benefit of no where to go is I am finally getting to all the blog posts I didn’t have time to do before! Back in November we went to Göreme in Cappadocia in the center of Turkey. It is a very, very popular tourist destination for Turks and foreigners. We had our first (and so far only!) visitor and decided to take a long weekend trip there.

Göreme is a 3.5 hour drive or so from our house. The most common route is to drive past Tuz Gölü, or Salt Lake, and stop there for a break and walkabout. It’s about 1.5 hrs from our house. On the northern end, the Salt Lake has a large parking lot, restaurant/store/sitting area and then access to the lake. Often the lake at this point is very, very receded or very shallow and you can walk waaaaaaay out on the salt flats. It was receded when we were there, which was better for the kids as we could wear shoes. When it is shallow, I have heard it really hurts barefeet walking because of the high levels of salt. Some beach/pool shoes would be helpful.

Nice spot to stretch legs and use the bathroom. DH got a burger at the cafe and it was cheap and edible, but not stellar.

We enjoyed pretending to be Salt Bae (aka Nusret Gökçe), the famous Turkish chef and butcher, who owns a number of delicious meat-focused restaurants in Turkey and around the world. His signature move is a salt sprinkling action (see here).

The Salt Lake is the 2nd largest lake in Turkey and one of the largest hypersaline lakes in the world. It is particularly famous for its flamingo nesting grounds, though those are most commonly on the other end of the lake. This article and this article talk about the flamingoes. Some years 20,000 flamingoes hatch (though 12,000 is more common)!

The lake can also turn red from the algae and if you google the lake, you’ll see lots of red lake photos. The water we could see in the distance, however, was regular water-colored! The lake and its surrounding areas are a Class A wetland, which is not very common.

Here is a blog post about the pink water and visiting at sunset from another blogger.