Istanbul - As I stood in the basket of the balloon at dawn in the fantastical landscape of Cappadocia, Turkey, clutching my 13-year-old daughter’s arm in terror, I realised this was why travelling with teenagers could be such an adventure. Just as they so expertly know how to push your buttons at home, they can also push you out of your comfort zone on a trip. Sometimes way, way out.
I’m terrified of heights. My son, Liam, who decided to sleep in that morning at the Kale Konak Cave Hotel in Uchisar, also gets a little queasy when he’s too high off the ground. But my daughter, Tessa, like her father, Tom, is a daredevil.
As the colourful balloons filled with helium on that chilly February morning, and my teeth chattered with cold and fear, she flung her arms around her father with a childlike joyful abandon I hadn’t seen in years. Ah, I thought, there she is. I knew she was still in there under that growly teen who thinks I’m a dork.
The Voyager balloon ride turned out to be a gentle, magical float above valleys filled with “fairy chimneys” – tall, thin spires of stone – and ancient settlements cut into the rock. Tom, Tessa and I were just as giddy from the experience as any high we’d get from the champagne the pilots served after we landed. But for me, the real magic was that we shared the adventure together.
When Tom and I decided that we’d take our two sometimes surly teenagers along with us on a business trip to Turkey, I had a dreaded vision: the two of them stretched out on their beds in some charmless chain hotel in Istanbul, ordering hamburgers from room service while plugged into their iPhones watching Netflix, disconnected from us and oblivious to the strange and swirling new world around them.
The first decision I made, while it cost us financially, was the best: I turned down the all-expenses-paid accommodation in a five-star hotel offered by the organisers of the conference at which I’d be speaking. I surfed the internet until I found a small, quirky and wonderful little boutique hotel – five old townhouses – set around a lovely courtyard and the ruins of a 15th-century hamam, or Turkish bath.
The Hotel Empress Zoe, named after a colourful grande dame of the Byzantine era immortalised in one of the breathtaking golden mosaics in the 6th-century Hagia Sophia, was right in the heart of the old city, in the Sultanahmet neighbourhood.
It was just a short walk up winding, cobblestone streets to the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, the Topkapi Palace, home of the Ottoman sultans for 400 years, and that strange and swirling new world I wanted us all to see. So close that the muezzin’s call to prayer at dawn sent Tessa shooting straight up out of bed every morning.
The next best decision turned out to be serendipitous: we had brought only one adaptor. That meant everyone’s gadgets – four iPhones, two laptops and an iPad – died slow, battery-draining deaths. And Liam and Tessa found out the hard way that Netflix isn’t available in Turkey.
That meant our teenagers had to talk to us. At least some of the time.
We felt the difference almost immediately. Arriving in Istanbul after a long Turkish Airlines flight late in the evening, we left our dead devices in the family-style room at the Empress Zoe – we shared two bedrooms, a small kitchenette and a bathroom with its own marble hamam – and wandered up the street to the Aloran Café and Restaurant.
“Hello, nice family!” the host called, and began bringing heaped plates of delicious meze – hummus, olive oil, feta and olives – followed by lamb kebabs, and baskets of warm pita bread just out of the oven.
Soon, we found ourselves laughing, joking and telling stories. The kids gamely tried baklava and gooey Turkish delight for dessert and were sent home with blue glass evil eye trinkets by our friendly waiter.
“It’s nice not to have you nag about homework,” Tessa told me.
We walked the winding streets after dinner, admiring the oddly shaped gourds that had been turned into festive lamps with coloured lights. We ducked into a carpet shop. With the first of what was to become our standard drinks – apple tea for me and the kids, and raki, an anise seed-flavoured liqueur for Tom – we watched as the owner tossed rug after rug into a colourful pile.
When the kids tired of the spectacle and wanted to go back to the hotel, Tom and I let them. It wasn’t far. And the beauty of travelling with teens clamouring for more independence is that they were finally old enough to have a measure of it.
We planned the trip in the same spirit. We knew we wouldn’t have much time – seven days – and we wanted everyone’s input so we wouldn’t fly halfway around the world only for the kids to treat this trip as another lame attempt at Forced Family Fun.
I spread travel books and maps over the kitchen table and called up websites. Tessa voted for the air balloons of Cappadocia. Liam wanted to see Troy, but once we discovered there wasn’t a lot left of it to see we settled on the ruins of Ephesus, dating from the 10th century BCE.
On the day I would be working, Tom planned a trip to Gallipoli, where a young Mustafa Kemal fought British, Australian and New Zealand troops in World War I. I wanted to do three things: go to a Turkish bath, buy spices in the spice bazaar, and see whirling dervishes.
We learnt that even on a trip abroad, you can push teens only so far. They were game for a Turkish bath at the elegant Ayasofya Hurrem Sultan Hamam, built in 1556 and renovated in 2011, just across the square from the Hagia Sophia.
They patiently sat through the mesmerising Sema worship ceremony of whirling dervishes at the 13th-century Sultan Han caravanserai on the Silk Road between Aksaray and Konya.
But getting lost on the way to the spice bazaar after visiting the Grand Bazaar pushed them over the edge. Getting lost, to me, can be one of the greatest pleasures of travel – you never know what you’ll discover. They were hungry, cold and tired. “Why do you want spices anyway? You never cook!” (I bought saffron. I’m going to use it. Watch me.)
So we got smarter. We scaled back on sightseeing to give the kids more downtime – even with their anaemically charged devices.
We stayed in another family room at the lovely Nisanyan House Hotel in the mountain village of Sirince. We got in late in the evening after a long day seeing the stunningly beautiful ruins of Ephesus.
Over a delicious meal of steak, roast chicken and potatoes, and pasta for our vegetarian daughter, in the cosy dining room, we decided not to leave at the crack of dawn the next day as planned. We stayed up late playing backgammon in front of the fire in our room.
The next morning, as the kids got some rest, Tom and I walked around the village, with its peacocks, roosters and insistently loud donkey.
We made sure seeing sights did not become a list to slog through. When we visited the ruins of the ancient spa city of Hierapolis, we made time to wade in the blindingly white calcite thermal pools of Pamukkale and to swim in the thermal Cleopatra Pool, studded with Greek and Roman columns.
In Cappadocia, when we finished a hike through the other-worldly Red Valley, we left plenty of time for a long lunch at the Old Greek House in Mustafapasa.
In entirely new surroundings, and more unplugged than we’d all been in years, we got to know one another in new ways. I listened in awe as my son talked at length with our guide – Sukru Seckin of Argeus Travel – about the Hittites and the Battle of Kadesh in 1274BCE. “Where did you learn that?” I asked.
“History Channel. Playing Civilization on the computer,” Liam shrugged. “I like reading about this stuff.”
Sitting around a low table on colourful kilim cushions eating delicious vegetable and meat pancakes called gozleme and drinking tea stuffed with fragrant sage leaves at the Yavuz’un Yeri restaurant outside Ephesus, Tessa asked our guide, Yeliz Sivrikaya, what it was like to be a woman in Turkey.
One day, as we were walking towards the underground city of Kaymakli, I mentioned how much fun it was to explore new places together, that, at home, it sometimes felt like we were living on different planets. My daughter turned to me: “Yeah. I bet you don’t even know what my favourite colour is. It’s not pink any more.”
It’s green, I learnt. And sometimes blue.
Just as she had pushed me out of my comfort zone in the balloon, I’d pushed her out of hers – out of her room, out of our busy routines, away from the addictive and isolating pull of the virtual and into the unpredictable unfolding of the real world. We were connecting again. For me, that was the best adventure.
As we packed to return home, Tessa teased me that she still thought I was a dork. But perhaps a little less dorky than before. “I’ll take that,” I smiled.
Brigid Schulte, The Washington Post
If You Go...
GETTING THERE:
Because we had limited time and a lot of ground to cover, Argeus Travel booked flights and hotels and arranged tours. I can’t say enough good things about them. We loved our guides, and the agents helped us work out an itinerary to fit our budget.
www.argeus.com.tr
WHERE TO STAY:
Istanbul: Hotel Empress Zoe
Akbiyik Caddesi 10
www.emzoe.com
Rooms, including breakfast, from $102 (about R1 240) for a single to $342 for a maisonette.
Ephesus/Sirince: Nisanyan Houses Hotel
Sirince, Selcuk
www.nisanyan.com
Rooms for two, including breakfast, in the main inn, about $125, cottages about $160 and rooms in houses about $193.
Cappadocia: Kale KonakCave Hotel
Kale Sokak 9, Uchisar
www.kalekonak.com
Some of the beautifully decorated rooms are carved into the rocks, and priced from $91 for a single in the off-season to $170 for a suite from March to November.
WHERE TO EAT:
Istanbul: Aloran Café and Restaurant
Cankurtaran Mah. Akbiyik Cad. Adliye Sok. 11
Open 8am to midnight, entrées are from $10 to $19.
Ephesus: Yavuz’un Yeri
Ataturk Mah. Yedi Uyuyanlar Mevki, Selcuk
Reasonably priced.
Cappadocia: The Old Greek House
Sahin Caddessi, Mustafapasa, 50420 Urgup
www.oldgreekhouse.com/en/index.html
Sample the tasty Ottoman-style menu in a 250-year-old house. Set menus from $13 to $17.
WHAT TO DO:
ISTANBUL
Hagia Sophia
Sultanahmet
http://ayasofyamuzesi.gov.tr/en
The church-turned mosque-turned-museum is open every day from 9am to 5pm in winter, 9am to 7 pm in summer. Tickets are about $11. Make sure you see the Viking graffiti and gold mosaics.
The Spice Bazaar (Misir Carsisi)
Eminonu quarter of the Fatih district
www.misircarsisi.org
Built in 1664, The Spice Bazaar consists of warrens full of shops selling spices and other goods.
EPHESUS
Ancient city of Ephesus
Adnan Menderes Bul, Selcuk
goturkey.com/en/pages/read/ephesus
Buy tickets for $12.50 at the gates of the upper and lower entrances or online: www.muze.gov.tr/tr/purchase?t=5.Be sure to buy a $7 ticket to see the stunning Terrace Houses.
Cappadocia
Cappadocia Voyager Balloons
Muze Yolu Cad. No:36/1 Goreme
www.voyagerballoons.com
Flights are at least an hour: $182 each, with 20 to 28 people a basket, $205 for 12 to 16 people.