A Night Less Ordinary: Garamisu Cave Hotel
Garamisu Cave Hotel
In this weekly series, we scour the world in search of weird hotels and wonderful holiday concepts. From space hotels to converted prisons, capsule pods to underwater guestrooms, you can expect only the unexpected.
A rocky night’s sleep: Garamisu Cave Hotel
What’s the gimmick? Once the housing the cells of a prison, today the Gamirasu Cave Hotel has been transformed into a series of luxurious and cave accommodations, set in a 12th century Byzantine Christian monastery. This impeccably restored 18-room cave house in Ayvali Village, situated in the heart of Cappadocia, Turkey, prides itself on blending historic facades with the utmost in modern conveniences.
Why stay? If not just for the chance to sleep in a cave, then the Gamirasu Cave Hotel also has some uber-cool highlights. It offers Turkish cooking courses in their mean hotel kitchen, which serves up organically produced food in a typically Cappadocian style of dinner, with six Turkish dishes. There you can try your hand at Turkish wine-making or baking artisanal breads in a stone oven. There is also the unique perk of witnessing the meditational dance of Whirling Dervishes on the grounds of the Gamirasu. This Sufi worship ceremony, formally known as the Sema, is performed with the aim of reaching religious ecstasy. The spinning of the body in repetitive circles is said to be symbolic of planets orbiting the sun.
The wow factor: Each of the seven old houses, containing some 30 exquisitely restored rooms, are carved out of a volcanic rock called ‘tufa’. Tufa is perfect insulation material, keeping the room temperature between 17 – 20 degrees Celsius throughout the year, whilst also ensuring that all rooms are different from each other in their size, shape and qualities. The Roman King Suite comes with an inbuilt Roman pool, Turkish bath, Jacuzzi and LCD flatscreen. Not quite the cave you were expecting, huh?
Give us a call for bookings or visit the Gamirasu Cave Hotel site. You won’t regret it.
