City guide
Volcanic rock carved into houses, churches and whole underground cities, with a hundred balloons over it at dawn. Yes, it is worth the early alarm.
Turkey5 min readUpdated August 15, 2026
Cappadocia is not a city but a region of valleys in central Anatolia, and the practical base is Goreme, with Uchisar and Urgup as quieter alternatives. Soft volcanic tuff eroded into cones and pillars, and people have been hollowing them out to live in since at least the fourth century.
Two days is enough for the highlights and three is better, because the balloons only fly in the right weather and you want a second morning in reserve.
Central Anatolian cooking is slow and meat-heavy, and the regional dish is testi kebab: lamb sealed in a clay pot and broken open at the table. It is a bit of theatre and also genuinely good.
Goreme
Home cooking in a converted cave house, run by a family who will bring you mezze until you ask them to stop. Small enough that booking is genuinely necessary.
Ask the concierge to book thisA family kitchen in a cave, with about eight tables and one sitting.
Goreme
The most ambitious kitchen in the village, working on old Anatolian recipes with a terrace looking over the rocks. The place for a proper dinner rather than a kebab.
Ask the concierge to book thisUrgup
Terraced mezze house in the next town over, where the set menu arrives as about fifteen small plates. Wine list drawn from the local vineyards, which are older than most in Europe.
Ask the concierge to book thisGoreme
Pide straight out of a wood oven, in the middle of the village, for the price of a coffee. Where you eat on the day you got up at four for the balloons.
Cave hotels are the point, and quality varies enormously. Goreme for walking to everything, Uchisar for the views, Urgup for a town with residents.
Uchisar
Restored cave rooms filled with genuine antiques, on the hillside below Uchisar castle. The infinity pool faces the valley the balloons rise from.
Ask the concierge to book thisAn antique collection you are allowed to sleep in, with the best terrace in the region.
The terrace that half of Instagram has photographed, above Goreme. Rooms are comfortable, and you are paying for the position at sunrise.
Local tip: Terraces here get busy at dawn even for guests. Ask which rooms have a private one.
Ask the concierge to book thisGoreme
A long-running family hotel with a spread of room types from plain to elaborate, a hammam, and honest advice about balloon operators.
Ask the concierge to book thisGoreme
One thing at dawn, one underground, one in the open air, and one walk. That is a full two days without rushing.
Goreme valleys
An hour in a basket over the valleys as the sun comes up, with a hundred other balloons around you. Expensive, over-photographed, and still one of the best things in travel.
Local tip: Flights are cancelled for wind and it is not negotiable. Book your first morning so you have two more to retry.
Goreme
A monastic settlement of rock-cut churches with Byzantine frescoes still on the ceilings, some from the 11th century. The Dark Church costs extra and has the best-preserved of them.
Derinkuyu
Eight levels dug eighty-five metres down, with stables, chapels, wells and stone doors that sealed from inside. Thousands of people hid here for months at a time.
Local tip: Passages are low and narrow for long stretches. Not one to attempt if confined spaces are a problem.
Cavusin
A few hours through pink and orange canyons, past abandoned churches, ending at a viewpoint where everyone comes for sunset. Free, and the best walking here.
Central Anatolia is empty and the distances are real. Each of these is a half or full day with a car.
The capital of the Hittite empire, walls and lion gates on a windy plateau, three thousand five hundred years old. A long drive for serious ancient-history interest only.
ancient · full day
Ask the concierge to book thisRock churches and cone houses with almost nobody in them, an hour south. What Goreme felt like before the balloons.
quiet · churches · half day
A green river gorge cut a hundred metres deep, with rock churches along a flat walking path. The complete opposite of the dry valleys around Goreme.
walking · gorge · full day
Everything above, on one map. Colours mark what kind of place it is; tap a dot and its details open beside the map, and you keep your place. Day trips are left off, they sit well outside the city.
Pin positions are approximate: neighbourhood level, not street addresses.
Roughly a third of mornings are cancelled in some months. Book early in your stay, and treat any operator who guarantees a flight as a warning sign.
A genuine carved room is cool, quiet and dim. Many are modern rooms with a textured wall. Look for real photographs and check for damp.
Central Anatolia is 1,000 metres up. Winter is properly cold, and the valleys under snow are spectacular but the walking is hard.
Balloon operators, cave rooms with a private terrace and a driver for the outlying valleys all book up well ahead, and the difference between operators here is real. Message the Simly concierge with your dates and a person will arrange it and build in a spare morning for the weather.
Message the conciergeEverything in this guide assumes a working phone: maps between neighbourhoods that follow no grid, ride-hailing instead of flagging taxis, a menu handwritten in Arabic. A Simly eSIM activates before you land, so you step off the plane already connected.
Get a Simly eSIMCappadocia, Turkey
