The bus ride from Fetiye to Goreme was 55 lira. I’d asked Omer if I should book our tickets from Goreme to Istanbul in advance and he’d told me that there was no need, later I found every bus we wanted was full.
Here is a full listing of hotels and cave hotels in Goreme, Turkey
If you want to go from Goreme to Istanbul on a specific day, book it in advance. At the Fetiye Otogar, I felt like some sort of shell game took place as we were led to a different bus company than I’d bought tickets for and our tickets were changed for new ones. We were then led to a big bus that wasn’t nearly as nice as I had thought it would be and then we set out. I looked for another bus heading out at the same time as us, but didn’t see one, maybe it was legit but something stunk of a swindle to me. Regardless, our bus left when it was supposed to and took us where it was supposed to so maybe being in a tourist trap had simply made me paranoid.
We slept on the bus and arrived in Goreme where Omer had said there was no need to make a reservation. I called our too top choices to see if they had cave rooms for us but they didn’t. In the small tourist information booth, I found another place which looked good and they did have a room so we went with them. They told us to sit and wait and the room would be ready in a few hours. I got on the net and realized they were trying to charge us 20 lira more than their published rate. When I asked why, the manager said it was because the room was bigger than the one’s on the web. He refused to budge and at 100 lira a night, I felt like we could find more than just a big room since this wasn’t even actually a cave.
Hanane wasn’t happy with me as we left with our bags but I wanted to walk and look and find the place that seemed best to me. I went into a few and asked the prices and if they had rooms. It seemed that 100-150 lira was the going rate for a double room. I started to walk into Moonlight Cave Suites and Hanane grabbed me and told me to stop because there was no way we could afford this one. It was beautiful. I almost listened to her, but to be honest, I was tired of not following my instincts and instead bowing to her Moroccan sense of ‘shame’ and ‘hshuma’ meaning that she didn’t want to ask because she didn’t think we could afford it. I went in and she decided to just wait in the street.
It was more beautiful inside. It was a new place and they’d spared no expense making it deluxe and beautiful. I’ve no doubt that it will become one of the top boutique hotels in Goreme. I say will become because in fact, it hadn’t really opened yet. They’d had a soft opening a few nights before and were offering rooms at incredible discounts just to get the word out.
Before he would tell me the price, the owner insisted on showing me the room. We walked in and I knew it was beyond our range. A beautiful cave room suite with a large flat screen TV, leather sofa, deluxe king size bed, full size jacuzzi bathtub, mini bar, jet shower, white robes, white slippers, and incredible inset lighting. It was gorgeous.
He laughed when I told him it was the nicest room I’d seen in Turkey. “It ought to be,” he said “We just spent 8 million Euros making this place.But wait until you see our deluxe suites…” The room I was drooling over was a ‘standard’ !!!
He suggested we go back to his office and talk about the price. I saw his rate sheet on the desk and knew it was going to be beyond us. Standard suite….180 Euro per night. We spent a few minutes talking about my travels in Turkey, travel writing, and the business of promotion. We settled on a price of 100 lira for the night! I was flabbergasted. I told him that I needed to let Hanane see the room before I said yes for certain. I was desperately afraid she would say no since I wanted to enjoy this room, but of course, she saw it and wanted it too.
Now, with a room like that, it’s hard to leave but I wanted to go get our bus tickets to Istanbul for the next night since we had the top suite at the Hotel Ayasofya reserved for our last night in Turkey.
Hanane laid down for a nap while I went to go get the tickets. Every bus company was sold out. I cursed Omar for his bad advice and tried to figure out what to do. The bus companies just told me I would need to wait another day. I couldn’t do that, we had another suite waiting and paid for!
I sat for a minute and figured it out. We’d take a bus to Ankara and from there we could take the train or a bus to Istanbul since the bus service is more frequent from Ankara than from Goreme. So, I bought tickets to Ankara and started to dream about catching a sleeper train to Istanbul. The only problem was that the bus to Ankara left at 2pm instead of 7 pm so we wouldn’t have time the next day to explore or take a tour.
Back in our deluxe cave suite, I forced Hanane to wake up since we only had half a day in Cappadocia and I thought it would be a shame not to see anything while we were here.
