Blogs from Cyprus, Middle East - page 8

Today's I want to tell you about the village, where the houses are older than some countries. FIkardou is a small beautiful village located about 40 km southwest of Nicosia (Cyprus). Kalo Chorio and Lazanias are two traditional villages located in the neighborhood. FIkardou was declared an ancient monument and carefully restored to preserve the 18th century houses with their remarkable woodwork. My very first impression ofFikardou was that feeling of calmness, peace, tranquility this village creates. There were untold stories behind those old locked doors of abandoned houses. Beautiful flowers, breathtaking views of blossoming almond trees and the untroubled surroundings made you want to stay there forever. It is believed that the name of the village was originated from the greek "figa andron" (den of fugitives) from the fugitives who were recruited by two main ... read more

Day 171 Thursday 7th July 2016 – Nicosia – Pernera Damn us for booking our accommodation a week ahead, because honestly could have easily stayed in Nicosia another week – just love this city. Heading to the coast again today to a region that has been described as hedonistic heaven – still don’t know why we are, except to sample another side of life on this island. Had wanted to tour the Turkish side some more but it has very limited tourist facilities and combined with the end of Ramadan it just seemed too hard. The guy running the kitchen at our hotel is as un Greek as you could possibly meet, perhaps the happiest man we have ever met, with his favourite saying each morning being “I am better than yesterday, and worse ... read more

Day 161 Monday 27th June 2016 – Limassol to Pafos Didn’t get much sleep last night as my foot screamed at me constantly, but somewhere in the early morning the anti inflammatory I took started to kick in and I dozed for a bit. Whilst not sleeping I tried to think of what we were going to do today as we supposed to be moving on to Pafos. It was a struggle getting from the bed to the bathroom so I knew the ten minute walk with backpacks down to the bus stop wasn’t going to happen. Shelley didn’t sleep much either and so when we got up in the morning we went through our options and decided to ring the owner of the hotel and see if he could organise a taxi for ... read more

We spent the day at Paphos, the place where Aphrodite drifted ashore on her half shell. Her birth was the consequence of a particularly nasty father-son conflict, when Cronos emasculated his father Ouranos and the severed member fell into the sea off Cyprus. The "foam" (as they politely call it) from this organ caused the sea to give birth to Aphrodite. She was almost born on Cythera, near the Peloponnese, but the winds blew her to Paphos. (I wonder what the Cytherians have to say about that!) Anyway, her landing spot is a beach of beautiful polished stones with several impressive white rocks rising from the waves. Paphos was, not surprisingly, a major location for worship of Aphrodite and there's a large complex of religious buildings there that date from around 1400 BC through to 400 ... read more

Today we had one of the highlights of the tour: a visit to the site that our tour leader Kevin is working on. It's a town from the Late Bronze Age (about 1400-1200 BC) that has a very large building in it that looks rather like a palace. Whoever ruled the place based his wealth on olive oil: one room in this building held around 40 giant jars of olive oil, and there were two large areas of the building that seem to have been used to produce oil on an industrial scale. There are letters from the "King of Cyprus" to the Pharaoh of Egypt at this time, and Kevin speculates that the Cypriot king may have lived in this "palace". We also visited the really lovely village nearby where Kevin and Sheri go for ... read more