On an international vacation, even unplugged teens find Turkish delights

But they were hungry, cold and tired and had already schlepped around a lot that day.

“Hello nice family!” the host called, and began bringing heaping plates of the most delicious meze, or appetizers, of hummus, olive oil, feta and olives, followed by lamb kebabs, rice and baskets of warm, poofy pita bread just out of the oven.

The next best decision turned out to be serendipitous: We had brought only one adapter.

“Hello nice family!” the host called, and began bringing heaping plates of the most delicious meze, or appetizers, of hummus, olive oil, feta and olives, followed by lamb kebabs, rice and baskets of warm, poofy pita bread just out of the oven.

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.

“Hello nice family!” the host called, and began bringing heaping plates of the most delicious meze, or appetizers, of hummus, olive oil, feta and olives, followed by lamb kebabs, rice and baskets of warm, poofy pita bread just out of the oven.

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.

And they patiently sat through the mesmerizing Sema worship ceremony of whirling dervishes at the 13th-century Sultanhan Caravanserai on the Silk Road between Aksaray and Konya.

And we made sure seeing sights didn’t become a To Do List to slog through.

We scaled back on the sightseeing to give everyone more downtime, yes, even limited time with their anemically charged devices.

Instead, I surfed the Internet until I found a small, quirky and wonderful little boutique hotel — five old townhouses really — set around a lovely courtyard and the ruins of a 15th-century hamam, or Turkish bath.

Buy spices in the spice bazaar.

And Tessa showed off her tech savvy in somehow finding a really terrible Nicolas Cage movie, a “Ghost Rider” sequel that was filmed in Cappadocia so we could watch it on the one laptop that was charged.

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 respective beds in some charmless chain hotel in Istanbul, ordering hamburgers off the room service menu while plugged into their iPhones watching Netflix, disconnected from us and oblivious to the strange and swirling new world around them.

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.

Istanbul is the former seat of the opulent Byzantine and Ottoman empires and is divided into European and Asian sides by the Bosporus Strait.

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 respective beds in some charmless chain hotel in Istanbul, ordering hamburgers off the room service menu while plugged into their iPhones watching Netflix, disconnected from us and oblivious to the strange and swirling new world around them.

When we visited the ruins of the ancient spa city of Hierapolis, we made sure we had enough time to wade in the blindingly white calcite thermal pools of Pamukkale, and to swim in the outdoor thermal Cleopatra Pool, studded with Greek and Roman columns, which, though touristy, was a lot of fun.

And Tessa showed off her tech savvy in somehow finding a really terrible Nicolas Cage movie, a “Ghost Rider” sequel that was filmed in Cappadocia so we could watch it on the one laptop that was charged.

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.

(Sean Gallup/Getty Images) The Voyager hot air 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.

And the beauty of traveling with teens clamoring for more independence is that they were finally old enough to have a measure of it.

(The kids thought having someone scrub off all your dead skin was weird.

We knew we wouldn’t have much time — seven days in all — and we wanted everyone’s input so that we wouldn’t fly halfway around the world only to have the kids treat this trip as another lame attempt at Forced Family Fun.

Sitting around a low table on colorful kilim cushions eating delicious vegetable and meat pancakes called gozleme and drinking tea stuffed with fragrant, fat sage leaves at the Yavuz’un Yeri restaurant outside Ephesus, Tessa asked our guide, Yeliz Sivrikaya, about what it was like to be a woman in Turkey, reflecting on how jarring it was for her to not only put on a head scarf at mosques, but to have to put on a skirt over her leggings.

So as the colorful balloons filled with helium on that chilly February morning, as 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.

Sitting around a low table on colorful kilim cushions eating delicious vegetable and meat pancakes called gozleme and drinking tea stuffed with fragrant, fat sage leaves at the Yavuz’un Yeri restaurant outside Ephesus, Tessa asked our guide, Yeliz Sivrikaya, about what it was like to be a woman in Turkey, reflecting on how jarring it was for her to not only put on a head scarf at mosques, but to have to put on a skirt over her leggings.

(Sean Gallup/Getty Images) By Brigid Schulte May 14, 2015 As I stood in the basket of the hot air balloon at dawn in the fantastical landscape of Cappadocia, Turkey, clutching my 13-year-old daughter’s arm in terror, I realized that this is the very reason why traveling with teenagers can be such an ad­ven­ture.

Sitting around a low table on colorful kilim cushions eating delicious vegetable and meat pancakes called gozleme and drinking tea stuffed with fragrant, fat sage leaves at the Yavuz’un Yeri restaurant outside Ephesus, Tessa asked our guide, Yeliz Sivrikaya, about what it was like to be a woman in Turkey, reflecting on how jarring it was for her to not only put on a head scarf at mosques, but to have to put on a skirt over her leggings.

And, with the first of what was to become our standard drinks — apple tea for me and the kids, raki, an anise-seed-flavored liqueur for Tom — we watched as the owner tossed rug after rug into a colorful pile.

So as the colorful balloons filled with helium on that chilly February morning, as 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.