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Saturday 2004-05-22 - Akdamar, Turkey
Church on an island
Van is a big city but (apart from a museum that’s said to be nice) not very interesting in itself. Instead, we go to the island Akdamar in the Lake of Van. We’ve decided not to take the (expensive) official tour but arrange our own. With our own bus we drive back along the east and south side of the lake, with again a spectacular view of the green-blue lake with snow-capped mountain ranges all around. Where the ferry boats leave for the island, our tour companion arranges with the boat owner that he will take us there, make a circle all around the island, then give us three hours to spend there. We’ve taken along food for a picnic lunch, bought before we left.
Our main goal is the old Holy Cross church built on the island, dating back to the 10th century. There are beautiful reliefs on all the walls; inside there are still some fresco fragments, mostly blues but hard to discern what the scenes are. Around the church is also a number of grave stones, most half-toppled, some also finely decorated with reliefs.
The island has two tops; I skip the high one to spare my painful knees the steep climb but go with Vera to the lower one on the south-east side. From there you can still overlook almost all the island, and I attempt to make a panorama photograph — a bit hard to do balancing on the rocks… no idea how this will come out. The island is covered with many types of flowers, different kinds of lillies and hyacinths, wild onions, beautiful euphorbias, many species I don’t recognize. I take a lot of pictures! After our picnic lunch we return to Van, where I decide to spend the remainder of the afternoon writing.
After our extensive lunch on the island we’re not terribly hungry so in the evening we head back to the ‘soup salon’ for a light meal, where we find most of the group also enjoying their delicious soup! After dinner it’s back to the Internet cafe in Van (there’s one conveniently right next to our hotel) to catch up with my travel blog!
