Cappadocia stay recommendations
 

Traveling with my husband, we are looking to do a 4-5 night stay in Cappadocia Turkey. Want suggestions on best town to base our stay (Groeme, Uchisar, Urgup) and small boutique hotel recommendations, cave rooms with a beautiful view and location. Also recommended sites, tours, hikes, balloon ride companies etc. Should we rent a car for that time? Thanks!

Valerie...read this thread for detailed comments on Cappadocia by me(Tower), Aduchamp and sassafrass...will give you a good rec for a cave stay...all three of us agree on it...and there's some more helpful stuff on that thread.While there, click on my Scenes of Turkey for Cappadocia pics and Esbelli Evi (the Urgup cave lodgings) as well as Pamukkale, Ephesus, etc.

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...e-to-stay-.cfm

Stu Tower

We just got back and stayed at Kelebek.
http://www.kelebekhotel.com/
You need to book directly with them. The staff is amazing. We loved this hotel , the best stay of the entire month of travelling. The food was outstanding as well.

The views were great and we also booked the balloon ride with them which was outstanding. I would definatley stay here again. If you pay cash you get a discount. They book up quickly though so I am not sure if they would have rooms left for your date.

Wow...Kelebek looks awesome and so reasonable...what room did you stay in? can you recommend any. The presidential suites are fairly reasonable compared to prices in other hotels and they look amazing!!

live42day: We are staying at the Kelebec in October. Which balloon ride did you take? Did you eat at other restaurants that you can recommend?

Another vote for Kelebek.

I stayed there a few years ago and had a wonderful time. The staff were excellent and the views fantastic. I also had a cave room and it was amazing: large, spacious, tastefully decorated and furnished with a living room as well - and no claustrophobia.

I'm glad to see that they are still providing great service and would recommend them in a flash.

They were booked up so we could only get the smallest room but we were just happy to be there. So we had the worst room in the house and still loved it. One with a view would be fantastic,

Mathieu you must have had a large room, lucky.

We used the balloon company that the hotel recommended, Butterfly, and they had the best reviews. They were very proffesional and I felt perfectly safe with them. If you pay cash you get a 10% discount. We only did the one hour ride and that was enough in my opinion.

We ate all our breakfasts at the hotel of course and two dinners because it was so good and we were tired at the end of the day. We quite often wouldnt eat lunch as breakfast was so bit.

We did have one meal in Goereme but I dont remember the name of the resteraunt. All I rememeber is that there were cushions and tables on a veranda outside to eat at. The food there was really good too.

Thanks, live42day. We have reserved room 17...cave room with terrace (view of city & pool). Now I'm really excited.

Which towns that are more quiet/less touristy (Usichar/Goreme/ Urgup)?

I just drove through Urgup and it looked alot bigger than Goreme. Goreme is certainly touristy but we liked that

Urgup is less touristy. If you stay in Esbelli Evi or one of the cave hotels at the edge of town, it's very quiet and you can walk into town for more action if you need it.

We love the Topdeck restaurant so much that we went back again.
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restauran..._Province.html
It was rated no#1 when we were there just a month ago. The meze were amazing, the lamb chops were out of the world. I went into the kitchen to see what kind of spice the chef used. He was very nice to showed me. The chef inherited the cave house from his mom and he opened up his own restaurant. It's a family business, his wife and kids help out in the kitchen. You have to make reservation. There are about 4 tables with chairs and the rest of the tables are low and you have to sit on the floor which isn't an issue for us. The place is tiny and cozy and fills up fast.

They serve local wine and it's quite nice. Everything is reasonably priced.