Van is a city and province in the far east of Turkey, on the shores of Lake Van, and has been a large settlement since the first millennium B.C., initially as the capital of the kingdom of Urartu in the ninth century B.C. and later as the center of the Armenian kingdom of Vaspurakan during the Middle Ages. Today Van has a Kurdish majority and a sizeable Turkish minority.

The province is famous for the Van cat, which are large and white and have blue or amber eyes or one of each. They have been observed swimming in Lake Van (previous picture) and are known as “the swimming cat.”

Pleasant afternoon in the park, posted earlier: