Going to Tatvan, Akdamar Island, and Van

After Hasankeyf, we drove to Tatvan, which is right on the biggest lake in Turkey, Lake Van. The climate was noticeably different - at Hasankeyf we had sweat on our shirts, but a few hours later we were surrounded by snow capped mountains.







Tatvan was a pretty unremarkable city, it's just used as a base to visit Lake Van and Akdamar Island, which is a small island with a small Armenian church on it. We used a ferry to get out to it.





The church was built in 921AD by a king and there also used to be a palace and monastery which have not survived, but as you can see, the church is in pretty good condition!



There were so many reliefs on the outside, I couldn't believe how many there were and again, what good condition they were in.



Jonah and the whale



David and Goliath





The inside was really decorated, they certainly didn't leave any empty space!





While inside of the church, we were swarmed with a group of girls, most of them headscarfed, who are in teacher's school, and who really had probably not interacted with many tourists. They liked Art's bucket hat so much and wanted their picture with him. They were so sweet and friendly and they were dying to have us sit with them upstairs on the ferry but it would have been a little too much. Those are their feet hanging over the side. Unluer wanted to grab them but I didn't want anyone to fall over.



Some appetizers at a restaurant - delicious!



My kebab, made with good and probably local lamb meat.



Iskender kebab, very delicious but I can not eat it often at all. Pieces of pide bread are put on the place, with slices of doner (the meat that revolves on the stick and gets shaved off), followed by tomato sauce and melted butter, with yogurt on the side.

We stayed the night in Van, which was a really really busy city and so modern, many chain stores and young hip people. We visited the museum which was small but good, and things got a little silly out in the courtyard with the statues/steles.