Merit Sahmaran Van

... 305;cally 'purged' whats left ın me before I checked out. I decıded to skıp lunch to be more comfortable for the journey.

I checked out at noon and to kıll tıme I went to the ınternet cafe. After that I decıded to walk around abıt ın the center. All of a sudden a man called for my attentıon sayıng..'Sıngaporean? SIngaporean?'. I asked hım how he know and he saıd he's been ın the ...

... outside the city. Irfan Ayaz is from Van but is working in Istanbul, teaching English and German in a high school. Thru him we met his friend Orhan Kafkas who has a car and we took off for Akdamar Kilisesi the next day. Akdamar Kilisesi (church of the Holy Cross) was a Armenian church, built in AD 921 in an island in the lake. It is quite beautiful and unique, with wonderful relief carvings on the outside wall telling the stories ...

My first day on my second visit to Van was pretty much a wasted day.

I got in around noon, concluded it was too late to try and backtrack the few miles for a visit to the island of Akdamar after checking in to a hotel. So I first went to the Archaeology Museum, which had been closed on my last, brief visit to Van. It was small, and most of the exhibits are devoted to the local Urartan civilization that inhabited the area in 9th to 6th century B.C.

Upon ...

(Sim)

We had been quite excited about our visit to Lake Van but after reading one or two reviews on the Travelpod website, we thought perhaps our expectations were a little high and that maybe Van wasn't quite the place we'd imagined. Fortunately for us, Van well exceeded our deflated expectations and we had a wonderful few days exploring the area.

We had an early start to catch the bus from Diyarbakir to Van, at about 7am I went hunting for the bus tickets ...

Last night an apparent power suge in the hotel killed my computer. I don't know how bad it is--ie., if the memory is gone, or what. It just went black, like the soul of a crushed bug. Earlier in the evening the area in which I was having my evening meal lost power for about 15 minutes. Back at the hotel room there didn't seem to be power from the wall sockets, though the overhead ...

Woke up (far too early) to head off on a grand tour of Cappodocýa ... despite my absolute loathe of organized tours I got roped into this one!! We started in Goreme and drove around to an awesome viewing point at Uchisar with a beautiful view of Mount Erciyes in the distance. Ý was quite excited at the prospect of wandering through the underground city at Kaymakli. There are amazingly enough an estimated 36 underground ...

... but is hospitality was really welcome. This is also the ONLY hostel I have evr stayed in that offered ... get this ... A HOT BREAKFAST!!! No lies ... We ate our fill and headed up to our rooms for a long nap. We were the only guests staying in the hostel (being the start of winter) and had a cosy four bed room with bathroom. We all fell straight into bed and passed out for a good few hours! Managed to wake ourselves up in the early afternoon and ...

Managed to wake up at a reasonable time this morning and Ben, Flo and I headed out for a cruise on the Bosphorus. We managed to find a pretty good deal - 50 YTL for the three of us, but you really have to shop around as there are loads of touts circling the harbour. Head down to Eminonu to catch a boat. We sailed all the way down the Bosphorus and had a look over at the Asian side of Turkey - really beautiful! Considering that it was Ramadan the opportunities to visit ...

Soooooooo Our last couple of days in olympos were bliss...we spent one day at the beach then the next day we went to a hammam in the next valley over...i got the traditional exfoliation then a bubble massage-so great...like 2 feet of bubbles surrounding u and then someone massaging u...wonderful...we spent the rest of the day on their rooftop terrace in the jacuzzi and drinking at the bar...we made it back just in time ...

Leaving Olympus, with a concussion, after falling on my head in a volleyball game, there were 5 of us trying to hitch hike to Anatalya. We ended up sitting in the back of a truck playing cards with 3 turkish men! We caught our overnight bus to Goreme. We were lucky enough to be on a bus with about 8 people from the Gulet cruise. Arriving at dawn, Nikki and I settled into our Cave and headed out to see the sights of Goreme. Hundreds of cave, or fairy chimneys, most used as ...