Antalya Airport to Düden Waterfall transfer
Düden is really two places under one name. The upper falls lie in a wooded park north of Antalya, where the river drops into a gorge and a damp path leads through a cave behind the curtain of water — cool, loud and dripping. The lower falls are at the other end of the same river, on the Lara cliffs, where it goes over the edge straight into the sea; you look at them from a clifftop park or from a boat. Both are short visits, and both sit close enough to the terminal to be slotted into an arrival or departure day.
For the Lara and Kundu hotels the lower falls are on the doorstep — ten minutes to the clifftop park — and the upper park about twenty minutes across the city; from Konyaaltı it is the other way round. Belek and Kadriye are three quarters of an hour away, Kemer about the same, and from Side an hour and a quarter, which is why nobody comes for the falls alone: they open an Antalya day with Kaleiçi and the harbour. Alanya is close to two hours. No excursion bus links the two Düdens, so a car that waits at each is what turns them into one loop.
Düden is the site on this coast that really does fit an arrival day: 18 km and about 25 minutes from the terminal, which sits between the two. The lower falls are ten minutes from the Lara hotels, so the clifftop park slots in before check-in without doubling back, and the upper park suits a Konyaaltı or Kemer transfer. A quarter of an hour at the railing with the cases in the car is enough.
Visiting Düden Waterfall
Take the upper park first and the cliffs second, and the rest of the day arranges itself. At the upper falls you walk down to river level, follow the loop through the passage behind the water and climb back out: three quarters of an hour at a stroll, longer if anybody stops in the spray. The lower falls are a railing, a terraced lawn and a look straight down into the sea — twenty minutes, half an hour if you sit. Neither stop is long enough to send a car away and find another, so the same driver holds both and the twenty minutes between them belong to the outing rather than to the logistics.
Underfoot the two are nothing alike. The upper park is damp stone steps, gravel and tree roots, and the passage behind the curtain is low enough in places to duck, with spray arriving sideways; the rock there stays wet whatever the weather, and the noise makes conversation pointless. The cliff park is level tarmac and mown grass instead — a pushchair or a wheelchair goes round it — but there is no way down to the water at all. Morning light reaches into the upper gorge while the cliffs are still flat and grey; by late afternoon the sun has come round behind the lower falls and the sea beneath turns the colour people photograph.
What you fold in depends on which end you finish at. The upper park sits on the northern edge of the city, twenty minutes from Kaleiçi and the old harbour, so a morning runs as falls, walls, harbour and lunch. The cliff park belongs to the Lara side and pairs with the beach or with the archaeological museum on the way back across town. Boats do go out to the foot of the lower falls from the harbour, and they are booked with the boatmen rather than with us — we set you down at the quay and collect you afterwards. One thing to ask locally before fixing a date: the river does not carry the same water all year.
- Anything you carry through the passage behind the upper falls comes out damp, so a phone in a pocket is safer than a camera round your neck.
- If only an hour is left, choose the cliffs: the upper park needs its whole loop to make sense, while the lower falls are one look and a good one.
- Put the two Düdens on the same day rather than on two, because seeing only one leaves you never knowing why the name was given twice.
- At midday the cooler of the two is the upper park: the gorge holds shade that the clifftop lawn has none of.