Wednesday 21st November 2018 - Homeward bound

It was another early start this morning as we set off for Paphos airport and the journey home. There being little of interest to write about today, I though I would just include a few photos that I didn’t have space to use earlier on.

From Thursday, the first day of the holiday, this is a photo taken out of one of the windows of one of the towers in Kyrenia Castle.

It really shows the thickness of the walls.

On our second day, Friday, we travelled to the west, to Güzelyurt.

This is one of the derelict piers that used to be used for loading the copper ore onto boats. It seems rather sad that copper is no longer mined because the mines are in ‘no man’s land’, but possibly there is little copper left anyway, since it has been mined in the area for thousands of years.

On Saturday we travelled to Nicosia.

This is a photo of the outside of the Great Khan, the caravanserai built in the 16th century which I liked so much. You can see the wonderful chimneys which were used for each of the upstairs rooms so the travellers could light fires and stay warm. By that stage of the day, Paul would have liked a fire to keep warm, he was wearing my cardigan he was so cold!

On Sunday, we visited St Hilarion Castle and Bellapais monastery

This is another view of St Hilarion castle, taken from the middle ward looking down towards the Barbican. You can possibly appreciate the sheer size of the place, when you consider that the middle ward is behind me, and there are two levels above that, the royal apartments and the Prince John Tower.

This is another view of the beautiful gothic cloisters Bellapais Abbey, which was partly destroyed by an earthquake.

Monday was our day of rest, and we spent it looking more carefully round Kyrenia.

This is a view of a typical Cypriot kitchen in times gone by.

On Tuesday, we visited Famagusta and a number of places nearby

These are some of the other beautiful medieval dunks in Famagusta.

After that, we returned exhausted to the hotel to pack for our journey home.

There is little to say about the journey home. It was pleasantly warm in Cyprus - 25C on our last day, and about 10C when we landed in Gatwick. So there was some hasty suitcase opening to put on warmer clothes! 

This was the scene from my bedroom window on Thursday morning

It was a bit of a shock to the system, after lovely holiday weather in Cyprus!

Monday November 20th - Famagusta and nearby

We had to be up early today and in the coach by 9 for a long day of visits. Our first visit to the area near Famagusta was to the monastery and tomb of St Barnabas. 

St Barnabas was one of the founders of the independent Greek Orthodox church, and is the patron saint of Cyprus. He was originally a Jew, born on Cyprus, and went to Jerusalem to continue his education, where he converted to Christianity in 33AD. He was appointed archbishop of Salamis and returned to Cyprus in 45AD, intending to convert the Jews of Cyprus. This did not work too well, and during a second visit to the island he was imprisioned in a synagogue and later stoned to death. His followers secretly buried his body, and the grave was forgotten until it was discovered again in the 5th century AD. The Byzantine emperor at the time had a church built on the spot where the grave was discovered. This church was badly damaged in Arab raids in the 7th century, and the current church and monastery date from the 1750s. The number of monks gradually reduced over the years, and by the 1950s there were only 3 left. They continued to take care of the church and monastery until 1974, but were then obliged to retire. Nowadays the Greek Orthodox Church takes care of the site because it is so important. 

The church has now become an icon museum.

Most of the icons were painted by the monks, and, as far as I could see, the majority dated from the 19th and 20th centuries.

The monastery is very attractive.

It now houses an archaeological collection of finds from the local area, and is quite extensive. 

The earliest finds are from the Neolithic and extend through the Bronze Age to classical and then Roman times. This was my favourite object.

This Sphinx is from the Classical period, 475 - 325 BC

About 100 yards from the monastery, there is a small mausoleum built on the spot where the saint's remains were discovered. There are 14 steps which take you down to the cave under the building where the body of St Barnabas was hidden by his friends. We paid a visit to that too.

After this, the coach took us to the ruins of the city of Salamis, which aren’t far away. (This Salamis is not to be confused with the Salamis in Attic Greece, where there was the famous naval battle between the Greeks and Persians in 450BC, which took place between the Greek mainland and the island of Salamis in the Saronic Gulf near Athens)

The earliest archeological finds from this area date back to the 11th century BC, and though our guide told us there is a foundation myth which says that the founder of Salamis is said to be Teucer, son of Telamon, who could not return home after the Trojan war because he had failed to avenge his brother Ajax, there is no evidence to support this foundation myth.

The site is extremely extremely extensive, our guide says it is actually bigger than Ephesus, but not much of it has been excavated. Because the city was so extensive and in use for so long, the ruins we saw were Roman, rather than anything earlier. The cultural centre of Salamis during the Roman period was situated in the north part of the city, where a gymnasium, theatre, amphitheatre, stadium and public baths have been excavated. As well as the baths, there are public latrines (for 44 users), various little bits of mosaic, a harbour wall, a Hellenistic and a Roman agora and a temple of Zeus. We saw the theatre, the amphitheatre, the gymnasium, the public baths and (of course) the latrines.

The theatre was originally enormous and could seat 15000 people, as it was considerably higher than it is today.

As with the earlier theatre we saw at Soli, this theatre was originally Greek and converted by the Romans, and has been extensively restored. It is still in use today for various Famagusta festivals.

There is a wide road leading up to the gymnasium

The columns seen here are not necessarily the ones that belonged here, they have been erected to demonstrate the general appearance of the area.

The gymnasium was the usual open area, surrounded by colonnades, of which not much remains. Adjacent to this, we saw the Roman baths with various plunge pools

You can still see the hypocaust under the floor of the hot room, and there are a few remaining mosaics

Somewhat disappointingly, the 44 seat latrine did not actually have any seats remaining in it

The marble seats would have been on top of the supports you can see in the photo. What you can’t see in this area is that there were two channels for water, a lower one which was quite deep to carry away the waste, and an upper one nearer the seat level with water you could use to clean yourself with. I wasn't familiar with this idea, having always been told that the Romans used a sponge on a stick.

 After the visit to Salamis, we drove to Famagusta which is nearby. Famagusta was founded around 274 BC, after the serious damage to Salamis by an earthquake, but it was quite small. Later, as a result of the gradual evacuation of Salamis due to the Arab invasion, it developed into a small port.

After 1192, when the Lusignans ruled Cyprus, Famagusta increased in importance due to its natural harbour and the fact that the Lusignan rulers built walls that protected its inner town. Its population increased and by the 13th century the town had become a centre of commerce for both the East and West. An influx of Christian refugees fleeing the downfall of Acre in Palestine in 1291 transformed it from a small town into one of the richest cities in Christendom.

In 1489, Famagusta fell under Venetian rule. Just as in Kyrenia and Nicosia, the Venetians strengthened the walls and changed the shape of the towers from square to circular to suit more modern artillery.

We drove into the old city past the walls, which are quite extensive, and made our way to the Othello Castle. There seem to be two different stories about this name. One is that Shakespeare’s play Othello which is believed to be written in 1603 might have taken its name from this castle. Another is that the castle gets its name from the play. In the play Othello the Moor was a Venetian commander, sent by his masters to Cyprus, where "The fortitude of the place is well known to you."  From Act II onwards, the play is simply set in 'A seaport in Cyprus' and also in 'A hall in the castle'.

We crossed what had once been the moat, which is shown in my photo above. It was drained in 1900 to help prevent malaria. We entered by the main gate, which is adorned by the Lion of St Mark and the date 1492.

A dark tunnel leads you into the castle courtyard is not nearly as large as Kyrenia Castle.

This is a view of the courtyard from the walls above. At the far side of the courtyard is the Great Hall, which is vaulted and gothic.

We climbed the walls for views of the port and of the old city.

The ruins you can see are those of the former Royal Palace. On its left is the former cathedral of St Nicolas, which was turned into a mosque when Cyprus came under Ottoman rule. We weren't  able to go into the mosque because of prayers taking place, but this is the main door.

You can see it is once again a typical French Gothic cathedral. It is the largest medieval building in Famagusta. It was built between 1298 and 1312 and was consecrated in 1328. The Lusignan rulers of Cyprus would be crowned as Kings of Cyprus in the St Sophia Cathedral  in Nicosia (which we saw on Saturday) and then crowned as Kings of Jerusalem in the St Nicholas Cathedral here in Famagusta. Our guide said that this was the significance of the crown you can see on the door. Of course, by the this period, the Lusignans were only using the title of King of Jerusalem, since Jerusalem was being ruled by the Ottomans.

We were pretty exhausted by the time, and needed to sit down and to eat. By the time we had done this, it was 3 o’clock and time to get back into the coach. We just had time for a brief look at Varosha, which was originally a lively and very luxurious resort nearby which was much frequented by celebrities but was abandoned during the war in 1974. It is now just a ghost town.

Then we set off on the journey back to the hotel, for final packing and the farewell dinner. Tomorrow will be another day of travel as we make our way home.

Monday November 19th - Kyrenia again

Today was designated a free day, and we had tried unsuccessfully to persuade some others in our group that we should make a joint expedition to the Karpaz peninsula, the long finger-like peninsula that stretches out to the east of Cyprus. It is a mostly unspoiled region with wild donkeys and some interesting ruins. However, it apparently needs a group of 8 for such a trip, and we were unable to find 6 other people. 

Paul didn’t fancy a further trip to Nicosia, going to the Greek side this time, so we took the opportunity of visiting parts of Kyrenia we hadn’t previously had time to visit properly.

We walked down to the harbour and this time stopped to take photographs. It was a mostly bright sunny day and quite warm, but a few clouds crossed the sky just at the moment I was trying to take photos, so the weather was really a lot nicer than it looks in this photo. 

This shows the castle in the background, with the long passage into the harbour in the centre of the photo. You can also see the variety of different craft in the harbour, including one of the two sailing ships. But most of the boats appear to be pleasure craft, I didn’t see anything that looked like a fishing boat. Perhaps they are to be found moored elsewhere.

We also took the opportunity of wandering right round the castle. It used to have a moat.

You can see that there is now a road where the moat used to be. The arched bridge is the only entrance to the castle, and it is quite narrow. The moat went round two sides of the castle, and the other two sides were protected by the sea. We were able walk all round the castle as there is now a road between the castle and the sea, though previously when the castle was used for defence I imagine the sea lapped against the walls.

You can see from this how massive the walls were. There’s a blue car on the left of my photo, and just out of my photo but in front of the car is a huge rock with a metal hoop that looks to have been for mooring a boat at some time in the past. So clearly the sea was a lot higher and closer to the castle walls at one time.

The harbour is surrounded by some old buildings and some new ones.

Many of the older buildings have been renovated. However, another reason for this photo is the mountain behind the buildings. That peak you can see is the one with St Hilarion castle on it, so you can appreciate how it looked over Kyrenia in the past.

We took the opportunity of going into a delightful little museum which was a carob warehouse and an old Cyprus house. The slopes are steep behind the harbour, so the houses could be two or three storeys at the front in the north, facing the harbour, but only one or two storeys at the back facing the south. The lowest storey on the harbour side was mainly used as a warehouse for storing carob or other products like olive oil, wine or timber for export, though other goods were traded as well. This design of house has been used since the Middle Ages. 

The downstairs warehouse part of the museum was used to show a grinding mechanism for grinding the carob seeds, and for showing the variety of large pottery jars used for storage. Upstairs is the entrance from the street on the south side, and this is used for showing how the carob syrup is manufactured. This was obviously mostly done at home as a cottage industry. The carob seeds were first ground up and steeped in water for 24 hours in that rectangular wooden container you can see in my photo below.

Next, cleaned logs are placed between two chairs and a wicker basket placed on top. You can see the arrangement in the photo. Cheesecloth is placed into the bottom of the basket, and the carob seeds and water are poured in. The juice from the carob seeds is strained through the cloth and flows into that metal vessel you can see under the chairs. When it is full, the liquid is boiled - you can see a boiler on a tripod arrangement at the bottom of the photo. Froth rises and is skimmed off, and gradually the liquid becomes thicker and reaches almost a jelly-like consistency, so it is poured into storage containers and can be kept for years. 

You might wonder what it’s used for - I certainly did. It has a high natural sugar content, so is mostly used in the food industry, though it is also used in the pharmaceutical industry and in cosmetics. Apparently, according to the information in the museum, it is also a sort of general panacea! It is supposed to lower blood pressure, as well as helping the body to throw off radiation! It is full of calcium, so it is good for osteoporosis sufferers. It is said to be very good for the digestion and various stomach complaints, as well as helping to get rid of worms. It is full of zinc and various vitamins and is also supposed to be good for skin diseases. I think I’d better get some! 

Further upstairs is set out as an old Cypriot house, with a loom for weaving and a mechanism for spinning. These were also,cottage industries.

The loom is hardly visible here on the far left, almost out of the picture, but the mechanism for holding the spun thread is on the left. Carpentry was also a local industry and many things were stored in chests like the one here. I particularly liked the charcoal irons displayed on the chest, which I can remember from my childhood in Africa.

There was also a room set out as a bedroom. The bed was the main feature of this photo, but on the right of the photo is the edge of the wardrobe, and just out of the photo, a chair. Chair making was another local industry.

There was a fascinating film, made in 1930, about the life of Cypriot peasants, showing them using many of the artefacts that are now in this Museum. It was all very interesting, and we stayed far longer than we would have thought. 

After that, we returned to our hotel to rest and sit on our balcony in the sun. 

That’s the view from our balcony.

We didn’t have an active afternoon, we had a rest. Yesterday was quite exhausting and tomorrow is also going to be a very active day, so we are conserving our strength!

Sunday 18 November - Crusader Castle and ancient Abbey

We were in the coach again bright and early this morning and off to see a crusader castle called St Hilarion, in a mountain range just outside Kyrenia. This location meant it could command the pass through the mountains from Kyrenia to Nicosia. It is the best preserved ruin of the three former strongholds in the Kyrenia mountains, and it is absolutely enormous. I have certainly never visited anything even half as big. I’m viewing it as my compensation for being unable to visit Crac de Chevaliers in Syria, the crusader castle I really wanted to visit. 

St Hilarion castle was apparently named after some obscure saint who fled to Cyprus after the Arab conquest of the Holy Land and retired to a hermitage on this peak. The Byzantines began the fortifications and the castle, along with two others, formed the defense of the island against Arab pirates raiding the coast. The castle was further upgraded under the rule of the Lusignans who may also have used it as a summer residence. In fact, during this time the castle was the focus of a four-year struggle between the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and a crusader knight, John d' Ibelin, for the control of the whole of Cyprus, so you can see what a key castle it was. Just to give you an idea of how commanding its position was, this is a view of it from our next stop.

The castle is on the left peak of the two in my photo, the one with two humps. Heaven knows how anybody could build it up there, the terrain being so steep and rugged. Unfortunately, much of the castle was dismantled by the Venetians in the 15th century to reduce the the cost of upkeep of the garrison.

As you can imagine, the castle is reached by a scenic and winding road, with frightening hairpin bends which once again appeared to leave one end of the coach hanging over an abyss, and the driver had to reverse it up the final part of the road as there is nowhere at the highest point to turn a big coach!

The castle has three divisions or wards. The first one was the Barbican and it was here we really started our climb.

The lower ward probably housed things like the stables, though I was puzzled about how people actually rode horses up there, the terrain being so steep and rugged. Some of our party went no further, there is a café from which you can admire the views.

The climb up to the middle ward was steep and up flights of stairs, mostly with handrails. Everybody stopped now and again to catch their breath and photograph the views. This one shows how some the fortifications made use of the rugged terrain.

There was no way of getting rid of that rock, so it was incorporated into the curtain wall round the middle ward.

The middle ward was approached through a series of tunnels.

The middle ward housed the living quarters for the soldiers.

The views from the up here were magnificent, right down to Kyrenia and the sea.

There was also a café here, for people who felt they could climb no further, which was several more of our party. The path certainly became a lot steeper after that, and there were a lot more stairs, many of them worn and certainly not level.

Paul and I pressed on to the upper ward, which housed the royal family.  

The upper ward was surrounded by a 1.4 metre-thick Byzantine wall, made of rough masonry. The entrance is through a later pointed arch built by the Lusignans and was protected by a semicircular tower to the east. Within this upper the ward is a courtyard, with an extremely ruined kitchen. There are also the royal apartments, dated by various sources to the 13th or 14th centuries, and extremely ruined today, though the building had originally been of a basement and two floors. There are scenic views from the windows of the northern coast of Cyprus, but I won’t post any more views, there are probably enough already.

The Prince John tower sits on a cliff high above the royal apartments.

This is my best photo of it, though from lower down than the royal apartments and from the other side. The rugged appearance of the skyline on the left is the remains of a curtain wall. The royal apartments are the bit on the skyline to the right of the photo.Can you imagine what it must have been like to build all this in such a difficult terrain? I can’t! 

 I was pretty well finished by the time I reached the royal apartments, and the steps up to the Prince John tower are even worse, some not even steps but just huge boulders, so I opted not to climb the final bit. I was disappointed not to have climbed the whole thing, but the last bit looked so rough I though I risked not being able to get down again and having to spend the rest of my life up there! As it was, it took me quite a while to get back down to the lower café and was only accomplished with the help of Paul and by clutching the handrail desperately as the steps were so uneven and treacherous.

We got back into the coach and set off back down towards Kyrenia, then turned away to the south west and headed for Bellapais Abbey, the ruins of a monastery built by Augustinian Canons in the 13th century. 

The Abbey seems to have had a difficult life. In 1373, when the Genoese raided Kyrenia, they almost destroyed Kyrenia Castle and stripped Bellapais of anything that was portable and of any value.

By the time of the Venetians in the 15th century, the inhabitants of the Abbey reportedly took wives, and then to keep the business in the family, accepted only their children as novices.

When the Ottoman conquered Cyprus, they expelled the Abbey inhabitants and gave the abbey to the Greek  Orthodox Church, which then neglected the Abbey and it fell into disrepair. However, the abbey church itself became the parish church for the village that grew up around it, and the inhabitants of the village may have used the abbey as a quarry for stone.

The church is thus in better repair than the Abbey, and looks to be still in use.

Most of the rest is completely ruined, apart from the refectory which is often used for concerts. We walked round the ruined cloisters and also saw the remains of the dormitories and the chapter house.

These are the remains of the cloisters - I had climbed yet more stairs to whatever is left of the second floor

One feature I really liked in the cloister was that under one of the arches  there are two Roman sarcophagi that the canons once used for washing themselves.

The sarcophagi are one above the other, as you can see, with the upper one being decorated, and the lower one plain. Water flowed from the upper to the lower through the holes you can probably see towards the base of the decorated one, and then out of a channel to the cloister garden. This is outside the refectory, so I imagine they only washed their hands and possibly their faces here.

After we had walked all round the ruins, we left and went into the village. We hoped to find Lawrence Durrell’s house, as he lived in the village from 1953 to 1956 and his novel ‘Bitter Lemons’ charts his experiences on Cyprus and the people he met and befriended.

This is the house, located up the steepest hill I think I have ever walked up. It’s a lot less steep when you get to the house, but you can see from the angle between the door and the road that it still isn’t flat. The house is privately owned so it isn’t open to the public and I’m sure they must be annoyed by the constant procession of tourists who come to look at the door. The circular yellow plaque above the door records the writing of ‘Bitter Lemons.’

It was fortunate that there was a different, less steep way down a different street, as I think I might otherwise have been reduced to crawling! Back down in the village, we went to a recommended café and had a late but light lunch of cheese and spinach pancakes, a speciality of the area, which were delicious. I was amused by the fact that, in this restaurant, some of the tables were the pointed base Greek amphorae, on metal stands, with a circular glass top to turn them into a table. I wanted to photograph them but the people sitting there were strangers and not English so I didn’t like to ask.

After our late lunch we got back into the coach and headed back to the hotel. I was very glad to lie down on my bed, and we both fell asleep, being exhausted after all the step climbing.

Saturday 17th November 2018 - Nicosia

It wasn’t quite such an early start today, but we were in the coach by 9.30 and off to Nicosia. Paul forgot to bring his passport so we couldn’t go across to the Greek side, but Paul said he didn’t care anyway. We drove into the city past the ‘green line’ and were shown the area of now derelict houses along it and the Greek flag on buildings beyond. 

As we travelled, our guide gave us some of the history of the area. Remains in the south west of the city date back to the Bronze Age, four and a half thousand years ago. Later it became a city state known as Ledra, one of the twelve kingdoms of ancient Cyprus built, it is believed, by Achaean Greeks after the end of the Trojan War. According to tradition, the city was then rebuilt by the son of Ptolemy l of Egypt between 312 and 285 BC.  In Byzantine times, the town was also referred to as Lefkosia, and this is still its Turkish name today.

After the destruction of Salamis, the existing capital of Cyprus, by Arab raids in 647, Nicosia became the capital of the island around 965. The Byzantines moved the island's administration seat to Nicosia primarily for security reasons as coastal towns often suffered from Arab raids. From then on it has remained as the capital of Cyprus. A castle was built and Nicosia became the seat of the Byzantine governor of Cyprus. 

When Richard the Lionheart captured Cyprus and then gave it to Guy de Lusignan, the Frankish rulers could not, or would not, pronounce the name Lefkosia and instead called it Nicosia. They began the city fortifications, but these were destroyed by the Venetians when they took over Cyprus and considered that the walls were inadequate and so built new ones. Parts of these walls can still be seen today. There were three gates, Kyrenia Gate in the north, Paphos Gate to the west and to the east Famagusta Gate. Until cars arrived in Cyprus in the 1920s, our guide told us that the gates were closed between sunset and sunrise, so you couldn’t get into the city at night. There are no gates in place now, but you can still see where they were.

We got out of the coach at the Kyrenia Gate.

That was the gatehouse in the middle. There is a road on either side of it where the gates used to be, and on the left of my photo you can see part of the walls.

We walked down to the main square, Sarayönü Square, where there is a column originally brought from the ruins of Salamis and erected in Nicosia by the Venetians in 1570. 

It was then topped by the lion of St Mark. The Ottoman rulers removed the column when they ruled Cyprus, and the British re-erected it in 1915 when they ruled Cyprus. The lion of St Mark on the top could not be found, so it was replaced with a bronze orb.

The square is surrounded by colonial era buildings also erected by the British.

I think this used to be the Law Courts. It is now an administrative building.

From here we walked down to the Great Khan, a caravanserai built by the Ottoman rulers in 1572. It is the largest caravanserai in Cyprus.

It has been extensively renovated and is now an arts and crafts centre, housing small craft shops and restaurants, but when it was first built, the shops were outside. The ground floor rooms were largely stables, and the arches were high to accommodate camels. The upper floor had sleeping quarters for the travellers who stayed there. 

I absolutely loved it, it looks almost like something out of The Arabian Nights (if you discount the many restaurants), and I almost expected to see the central courtyard filled with camels! I also appreciated the opportunity to buy real crafts from the local area.

We next paid a visit to the Selimiye Mosque, which used to be the Cathedral of St Sophia.

It was built during the Lusignan period, between 1290 and 1326, and was the primary church in Cyprus, where coronations took place. It was designed by French architects in the French gothic style and built by French masons.

I couldn’t get far enough away for an overall view, but this is the entrance, looking like any French Cathedral. But after the Ottoman conquest of 1571, it was converted into a mosque. Minarets were added a year later.

So we sat outside and took off our shoes and I covered my head with my scarf and we went inside.

Our guide told us that under the carpet were many crusader tombs.

After that, it was virtually midday, a few people were coming in to the mosque to pray, and it was time for the Whirling Dervishes performance. Now this is something I have wanted to see since I was about 15 and read about them in one of my father’s books, so I obliged a somewhat reluctant Paul to attend the performance, which I don’t think he would otherwise have considered. 

The order of Whirling Dervishes was founded by the followers of the 13th Century Persian poet and mystic Rumi after his death. They were Sufi, a mystical and ascetic Islam practiced by tens of millions of Muslims; Sufi follow the five pillars of Islam like any Moslem, but one of their central practices is to recite divine verses and intone the name of Allah. It can be performed individually or in a group, and can be quiet or out loud. In the case of the Whirling Dervishes, this remembrance of God is performed by whirling. The dervish whirls for the love of God, and hopes to purify his sins and share the positive energy he creates for ‘the sake of love and brotherhood’.

I would post a video here of the whirling, but this application only allows me to add videos from the internet, not from my iPad. And no still photograph can convey the reality I’m afraid.

The whole thing is symbolic. The Dervish believes that the present is short and passes quickly, but the world after death is far more important. The hat on his head represents the grave stone, and the black of the sash and the coat represents sin and the grave. The white clothes he wears represents the shroud. During the whirling, his right arm will be raised to the sky and his left arm faces the earth, and the positive energy he creates passes from his right arm to his left and down to the earth so that he can share it with humanity and all living things. 

It remains a mystery to me why they don’t get dizzy and stagger about, as they whirl reasonably fast and for quite a long period. At the end, nobody knew whether to clap or not - is it appropriate to applaud worship? I still have no idea. 

The performance was held in what used to be St Nicholas Church, adjacent to the mosque we had visited first.

This was originally a small Byzantine church built in the 6th century whose ruins were used by the Lusignan rulers to construct a larger church in the gothic style in the 14th century. The  doorway has many similarities with the adjacent ex-Cathedral. It ceased being a church under the Ottoman rulers and was used variously as a market and for storage. It was abandoned in the early 20th century but has recently been renovated and restored. 

It being lunch time by then, we returned to the Great Khan to have some lunch. We find it quite difficult to avoid eating a full meal at lunch time, sandwiches seem unknown wherever we look. So today we opted for hummus and tzaksiki and pita bread.

By the end of lunch the sun had gone in and it was windy, and Paul was very cold. He had left his fleece in the bus, so he had to wear my cardigan. Fortunately he became a bit warmer as we walked about taking photographs and looking at the shops.  We would have visited museums, but apparently they are shut at weekends! 

Eventually we made our way back to the bus, and back to Kyrenia.

Friday 16th November 2018 - Touring to the west

Today we were obliged to get up early, as we had to be in a coach by 9am for our trip to the north west of Cyprus to a place of which I had never heard, called Güzelyurt. I found the waking up very difficult as I had slept very badly, owing to the pain in my back and hip. Consequently, I took paracetamol with my breakfast along with a Valium to relax the muscle spasms in my back. I also wore my back brace, and soon had to make use of the TENS machine as the muscle spasms became very painful.

The journey took about an hour, and as Güzelyurt is known as the fruit basket of Cyprus, we soon passed acres of citrus and walnut trees.

Our first visit was to the monastery and church of Agios Mamas.

The church is not as old as the other places we are to visit today, being 18th century, but it commemorates a 12th century saint called Saint Mamas. Legend has it that the saint refused to pay his taxes to the Byzantine government so soldiers came to take him away for punishment. On the way, they met a lion chasing a lamb, and the saint saved the lamb, putting it on his shoulders, and then rode the lion into the capitol. The Byzantine authorities were so impressed that they let him off and he didn’t have to pay his taxes. Now, charmingly, he is regarded as the patron saint of tax avoiders!

The church contains the tomb of the saint, which I photographed, though it doesn’t seem to feature either the lion or the lamb, or the tax avoidance, for that matter!

What it does feature (and I didn’t manage to fit it into my photo, unfortunately) is a hole in the stone of the tomb containing holy oil. This is supposed to cure any problems you have, so, having, as I said, an extremely severe back and hip problem today, I decided to try this. I suppose I probably didn’t pray hard enough though, because nothing worked until about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, so I had a pretty difficult day.

The interior of the church is glittering with numbers of stunning icons, many a great deal older than the church itself.

This photo just gives an overall impression, we didn’t really spend long enough to pay close attention to all of them. 

Next, we went into the Güzelyurt Museum, which houses many objects found in the archeological digs in the surrounding area. It begins with objects from the Neolithic era, and there is also a great deal of pottery from the Bronze Age, as well as the later Hellenistic Age.

This one was not labelled, but I take it to be late Bronze Age,

One of the later, and more important, items is this gold diadem known as ‘the leaves of Soli’ because it was found in a tomb in Soli.

I’m afraid it isn’t a good photo as the glass case is in the centre of the room so it isn’t possible to photograph it without getting lots of unwanted stuff in the background.

The statue of Artemis of Ephesus is regarded as the most important artefact in the Museum.

Anyone who has visited Ephesus will recognise this instantly! It was found in the sea near Salamis (which we will be visiting next week) and is much later, dating to the second century AD.

We made a quick stop for morning coffee near the town of Lefke, which used to be an important area for copper mining in the past. The café where we stopped was beside a derelict pier previously used for loading the ore, and had a huge photo on the wall outside taken inside one of the mines.

Our guide explained that there is no more copper mining in the area because the mines are now in ‘no man’s land’, the border area between Greek and Turkish Cyprus. He said the people now were engaged in agriculture and tourism instead, though it seems to me that either of those would be a difficult transition for a miner to make. Perhaps the miners went elsewhere - or perhaps some of them preferred to be farmers or waiters.

Our next visit was to Soli, an ancient Greek city which dates back to about the 6th century BC. What remains today is mainly from the Roman period, most notably the mosaic floor of the basilica with its wealth of birds, animals and geometric designs and a picture of a swan.

The basilica dates from the 4th century AD, but was probably built on the site of at least one much smaller church or chapel, since it is associated with the baptism of St Auxibius, the first bishop of Soli, by St Mark the Evangelist in AD 57. This was a period in which Christians were persecuted and churches were often secret and services held in houses, so it was not until the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine in the 4th century AD that churches and basilica could be openly built. 

The basilica was rebuilt in the 6th century AD, and many of the mosaics were covered up as they were not fashionable at that later time. The basilica is extensive, so it is difficult to do it justice in a photograph.

Further up the hillside there is a Roman theatre, built on the site of the original Greek theatre. It has been restored so much that it no longer has any atmosphere of either of the original ages, but it has been in use until quite recently.

Our guide invited us to declaim something from there he was standing on that thing that looks like a grid, but nobody had anything to declaim. That’s Paul on the right of the photo in the white cap, trying to remember the first lines of The Aeneid so he could declaim them, but he failed to remember them until later in the day!

The gold diadem known as ‘the leaves of Soli’ was found in a tomb near this theatre. 

After these visits, it was time for lunch, which we ate in a seaside café with a lovely view.

Then we went off for the last visit of the day, to the Palace of Vouni, which is reasonably nearby. It is on a hill in a commanding position 250 metres above sea level, and the winding road up to it was only the width of the bus! We drove up very slowly indeed, appreciating the wonderful views but with our hearts in our mouths at the steepness of the slopes over which either the front or the back of the coach seemed to be forever hanging, and fervently hoping there wouldn’t be another equally enormous coach coming down.

The Vouni Palace was built, either by the Persian or by Persian sympathisers in about 500 BC, apparently to spy on the Greek city of Soli nearby. Vouni was destroyed in 380 BC and has not been used since. 

The highest structure was the temple of Athena, with the Palace slightly below and lower down the houses of ordinary people. The site is extensive but you need a lot of imagination to visualise what it might have looked like as there is so little left.

I never did find out what that strangely shaped stone was meant to be, and there was no information anywhere. There were some signs, saying things like ‘store rooms’ and ‘kitchen court’ but there was no indication of how the archaeologists had arrived at those designations. The view were superb though!

By this end of the day my back and hip were a lot better (thanks to St Mamas perhaps?) but it was soon time to get back into the coach and head back to Kyrenia. Tomorrow, we will be visiting Nicosia.