A little over two weeks ago, I took an adventure with Aubrey that almost doubled my collection of passport stamps in a few days. Cyprus has been on Aubrey’s travel radar for awhile now, and because it’s just a short plane ride from where he’s currently living, we decided to plan a quick trip to the island together. Other than knowing it’s a small island in the Mediterranean, I was pretty ignorant to all things Cyprus before I started to research for our trip. Here’s a little information about the island for those who are curious:
The island is split between the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and the Republic of Cyprus. The Turkish portion of the country is located in the North and its independence is only officially recognized by Turkey. To the rest of the world, the northern part of the island is “Turkish-occupied territory”. The southern half of the island is the Greek part of the island, officially recognized throughout the world. The Greek portion, or the Republic of Cyprus, is a member of the European Union and uses the euro. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus uses the lira. Nicosia (or Lefkosa) is the capital of both halves and has remained divided since 1974. I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty of the island’s history, so if anyone wants to know why Cyprus is split, Lonely Planet’s website does an alright job summing it up here and BBC’s website also has a handy timeline of events.
After my flight to Turkey, which included an almost missed connection from Istanbul to Antalya (long passport control line, elderly and children in my way on the walking paths from one terminal to the next, and a painstakingly slow man through security), I made it! Aubrey prepared an evening in Antalya with mantı and shepherds salad for dinner (read about my love for Turkish food in my Antalya post), before we woke up Friday morning to hop onto a 45-minute plane ride to Ercan Airport in the TRNC.
From Ercan, we grabbed a bus to the northern Cypriot city, Girne (or Kyrenia). We only had a couple hours to spend in the city, but it proved to be enough. I recommend Girne as a must-see stop on a trip to Cyprus, but it doesn’t take too long to get through it all. The harbor is beautiful and directly on the water is a castle that looks nice, but was a few too many lira for us to want to go inside. I was fascinated by the colorful doors and shutters on the buildings and the cats roaming around freely. After walking around the city, Aubrey and I ducked our heads into an awesome restaurant called Whiskey Joes for a few ciders and fish and chips. The place was filled with British ex-pats (Cyprus was under British administration for awhile and today there still seems to be a big British community) and we unfortunately had to miss karaoke night to catch our bus to Nicosia. After a short bus trip to the Turkish half of Nicosia, Aubrey and I slowly wandered our way through the northern half of the city before we found the border crossing. Surprisingly fast and easy, we had crossed the border, gathered another stamp on our passports, and found ourselves on the Greek half of Nicosia. For all three nights that we were in Cyprus, Aubrey and I stayed at the Atsy Hotel in Nicosia. For future travelers, I can’t recommend it enough as an affordable, comfortable option. I even made a TripAdvisor account when I got home just to talk them up.
Friday night we caught up on our sleep after the previously busy day, but I woke Aubrey up nice and early for a surprise trip to Paphos. We got ready, packed our book bag, ate breakfast, and were ready to pick up our rental car by 8:00am. Professionals. I didn’t panic too much thinking about driving on the other side of the road although I might have asked Aubrey, “what if the pedals are backwards too?!” (they aren’t).
The drive from Nicosia to Paphos lasted under two hours, so we successfully made it in time to pick up my belated birthday surprise for Aubrey: rental bikes to have a leisurely ride from the center of Paphos to Aphrodite’s Rock and the Aphrodite Rock Brewery that recently opened up. To make a long, awful, still fresh memory short, it didn’t turn out so awesome. The bike “path” was actually the side of the highway, the leisurely ride was actually 26 kilometers (one way), and the path I was told would be flat was seemingly uphill both ways. Needless to say, we didn’t make it the full 26 kilometers to Aphrodite’s Rock, opting instead to visit a small village before turning back early in the hopes of catching a bus back (we later heartbreakingly learned that bikes are not allowed on Paphos city buses). Although we drove back to Nicosia exhausted and covered in scratches and bruises from multiple falls off our bikes, Paphos really is an awesome city. Before the birthday bike ride from hell (Aubrey seriously has a pass for the next eight years on birthday presents to me), we stopped at the Paphos Archeological UNESCO World Heritage Site. The ruins and mosaics are unbelievably expansive and it alone was worth the two hour drive from Nicosia. After a few hours of ruins exploring, we hopped back on our bikes and took a quick stop in the small village Kouklia. Sixteen kilometers outside Paphos, the little village housed another World Heritage Site and we learned a lot about the island’s history. The origins of the Greek goddess, Aphrodite, actually began in Paphos, Cyprus before the Greeks reached the island. Once they got there, the Greeks learned about the Paphos goddess of fertility and said, “Hey! We like that.” Baddabing, baddaboom, Aphrodite was adopted into the Greek pantheon. From Kouklia, Aubrey and I decided we’d done enough and headed back toward Paphos to turn in the torture devices I’d rented us. I highly recommend a stop in Paphos for future travelers to the island. I also recommend skipping the bike rentals. Explore the city with your feet or car rental and your butt will thank you.
After the failed bike ride the day before, Aubrey and I gave ourselves the chance to slowly get ready Sunday morning before finally exploring Nicosia. We headed first thing to the Cyprus Museum, which was free, and filled with a ton of information and artifacts for tourists to oogle at. Afterwards, we meandered into the original part of the walled city. Ledra Street, where we had crossed the border two nights before, is in the middle of the walled part of Nicosia and filled with shops, restaurants, and bars. We stopped for a quick coffee (Aubrey had a deeeeelicious iced cappuccino), before walking back along the wall and finding ourselves at another part of the border. Here was one of our favorite parts of the whole trip: we happened upon a Catholic church that sat directly on the border between the two parts of the city with barrels and barbed wire separating Turkish and Greek Nicosia. As the morning service was letting out, we realized the church was directly next to the courtyard of the Vatican Embassy. Standing in the courtyard, we could see the both the Turkish Cypriot flag and the Greek flag in our point of view and were there just in time to hear the Call to Prayer go off from the other side of the barbed wire fence. It was a cool moment.
After a quick nap back at the hotel to revive us for the rest of the evening, Aubrey and I went exploring to find his grandfather’s former house. In the 1950s, Aubrey’s grandfather lived in Cyprus for a few years and Aubrey’s dad went to kindergarten there. Guess what – it’s 2014 and the house still stands! It was awesome to find a little bit of Aubrey’s family’s history so far from Virginia. We creepily snooped through bushes and trees to use our detective skills to find the right house and luckily Cypriots asked if we needed help, rather than said, “What the heck are you doing?”
The rest of the evening we explored more of the old walled city, enjoyed a delicious dinner, and hit the hay before our final day in Cyprus. Monday I insisted that we check out Larnaca, an eastern beach city that popped up a lot in my research. We checked out of the hotel, jumped into our backwards rental car for the last time, and took an hour drive to see a little bit of what a Cyprus beach has to offer. Womp. We were disappointed. Granted, it wasn’t high season for the tiny island, but after the culture and history that Girne, Paphos, and Nicosia had to offer, we weren’t excited by Larnaca. We stayed about two hours, saw the Church of Saint Lazarus and his really old bones, before heading back to Nicosia, turning in our little rental, and crossing back over into the TRNC. As we wandered into the Turkish half of Nicosia, Aubrey’s nerd alarm went off, and he happened to find the European Commission building. Currently, the building is home to an exhibit on the former Ermou Marketplace in Nicosia that has now become the United Nations buffer zone between the two halves. It was fascinating to read the stories and memories of the former street’s shop owners. Unfortunately, it was our last stop in Cyprus before we had to head back to the airport.
Aubrey and I spend the majority of our trip on the Greek side, because that was where our hotel was located and we couldn’t drive the rental car across the border. We both left a little disappointed we didn’t see more of the Turkish half, but hopefully we’ll have the means to go again one day to see how the island has changed. My point is, my recommendation is if you travel to Cyprus (which you should), try to not let one side or the other monopolize your time. The Greek half is typically more touristy, but don’t let that keep you from checking out the Turkish side too.
Until the next adventure!
The Freckled Face 