Days 8/9 (March 21-22, 2015): Homeward bound

There isn't a lot to tell about days 8-9, as it's merely about the journey home. Anticlimactic -- sort of like describing the day after Christmas is over and the decorations are being put away. But for the record, here's how it all unfurled...

We got up at 3:30AM, not that we slept much anyway: our swanky hotel didn't permit temperature control so the room was constantly at 26C. For someone who sleeps with the thermometer at 12C, that caused a problem.  Anyway, we hit the road at 4:45AM, an empty highway for the 40-minute drive to Ercan Aiport. The car rental desk was empty, so the Turkish Police told us just to leave the keys on the open desk. I hope we don't get a $20,000 bill for a stolen car!

Oh, I did forget to tell you about the speed cams in Cyprus -- they are on every road, spaced a few kilometers apart. There is no escaping them, they are ruthless, and they cause untold stress. Ok, so maybe they save lives, but...

Our AtlasGlobal (a new airline to us) flight left on time at 7:00AM and arrived in rainy Istanbul at 8:30AM.

We paid to enter a lounge at Ataturk International Airport to escape the crazy crowds and to wait out our five-hour transfer in peace. Our Turkish Airlines Airbus A-340 left at 2:00PM, using the same aircraft (fin #) as the flight over.

The inflight service and amenities -- from slippers to care kit to meals -- were phenomenal again. They even had a "chef" on board, who oversaw all the food preparation, complete with chef hat!

Our on-board chef

Amenity kit in a cool can!

Menus in Economy Class?!

Stuffed eggplant with pizazz!

Arrival in Boston was on time at 6:35PM. We cleared customs, got an Enterprise car rental, and drove half an hour north of Logan to the same Sheraton in Wakefield where we stayed last Saturday.  

We will leave for Logan at 7:30AM tomorrow morning to catch our 10:00AM Air Canada flight to snowbound Halifax. And that, as they say, is that. 

Thanks so much for your interest in my blog. Cappadocia and Cyprus provided so much contrast for a March Break, we enjoyed every minute. 

Day 7 (March 20, 2015): Derelict buildings - of both medieval and 1970s vintages

It finally arrived: the first day of spring AND the last day of our visit to Cyprus. Our hotel, The Rocks, is fairly swanky. So we were wondering how the breakfast would stack up -- it stacked up quite well, in fact!  Omelettes and cappuccinos were consumed and we hit the road around 9:30AM, driving though the mountains here on the north coast to Famagusta on the east coast. Known for its medieval ruins and Venetian walls, Famagusta gave us the most enjoyable day of our vacation. 

We had no map, but somehow we luckily stumbled on the most common starting point for exploring the city -- the Land Gate, as it was called, in the Venetian walls. The first couple of photos show the magnitude of the walls, which are 15m high and 8m thick!  They stretch on for three kilometres, but could not keep out the Turks in the 16th century. 

Next, we started roaming the old city to explore the ruins of several key structures. See the captions below for details. 

The St. Peter and St. Paul Church (14th c)

St. Nicholas Cathedral - now the Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque (13th c)

Bland interior of the cathedral (now mosque)

This fig sycamore tree was planted in 1299 and is the oldest tree on Cyprus!

Remnants of the Gedikli Baths 

St. George of the Latins Church (14th c)

St. George of the Greeks Church (15th c)

I know, it just looks like a day of looking at old rubble. But the ambiance of Famagusta was really exceptional. We thoroughly enjoyed exploring the city. The best, however, was yet to come...  

We ate lunch at a cafe in the main square.  Having heard of an abandoned city named Varosha in the UN Green Line zone, we asked the waiter how we might find it. Although it's out of bounds, he told us a strategy, and it worked beautifully. We found a place as close to the Green Line as is possible to reach and then walked the beach to the barbed wire marking the Green Line zone. What met our eyes was simply the most unbelieveable sight we had ever beheld. And perhaps the most eerie...

The city of Varosha was quickly abandoned in 1974 as the Turkish Army advanced. Everything was left behind by the Greeks. There is even a car dealership in the town with a 1974 car still sitting in the show room. (We didn't get to see that, but read about it.). Yes, looting was horrible at the time, but the city is now off limits and what is left is simply decaying. It sits on the best beach in all of cyprus and back in the early 1970s, it was THE place to vacation. 

Eerie Varosha: Hundreds of buildings and high rises, all abandoned in 1974. 

What made it even more poignant was that we met a Finnish gentleman and his wife on the beach. He had been a UN peacekeeper in Cyprus at the time and today was his first day back since that time. He had shared living quarters with some canadian peacekeepers, in fact. As he stared at the decaying city with us, his eyes filled with tears. He told us how Greek and turks lived side by side back then. But how the war made enemies on both sides. 

After lapping up the view of the Mediterranean, we walked away from the ruins of Varosha and started the drive back to Kyrenia around 3:30PM, arriving at our hotel by 5:00PM. We closed the day with some souvenir shopping, a light dinner, packing, and I did another run around town. 

The beautiful Mediterranean. 

Signing off from Kyrenia. Good night!

Day 6 (March 19, 2015): A logistical plan enacted in full

If there was ever a day when logistics had to work like clockwork on a Dave & Pam tour, it was today for our return to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. 

The alarm went off at 6:30AM and we were enjoying the fine buffet spread at the Crowne Plaza by 7:45AM.  We pulled out of the hotel by 8:30AM and started phase 1 of a 5-phase logistics plan to get us from the south coast to the north coast.  Since rental cars cannot be taken across the border, the plan went like this:

1. Drive rental car from Limassol to Avis in Nicosia. 

2. Taxi from Avis to the Ledmas Street pedestrian border crossing.

3. Do Cyprus and Turkish border formalities. 

4.  Taxi from the Turkish side to Ercan Airport. 

5.  Pick up new rental car from Ercan and drive through the mountains to Kyrenia on the north coast. 

We stopped for a couple of viewpoints along the way to Limassol:

The view of Limassol beach

The flat white rocks of Governor's Beach

Waiting our turn at the Cyprus border crossing, we noticed this sign. Despite the decades that have passed, the separation between the north and south remains deeply bitter. 

Our new rental car was a Hyundai manual with 75,000km on the odometer. We had to climb a steep mountain range to get to Kyrenia, and at times we wondered if the buggy would even make it. 

Somehow we had pictured Kyrenia as a sleepy fishing town. But with 33,000 citizens and tons of tourists, it is a super-busy place.  Our hotel is right on the water near the Old Port - very comfortable. 

Here is the Old Port, with the Kyrenia Mountain Range in the background. 

The highlight of our afternoon walking the Old Town was our visit to the Kyrenia Castle, parts of which date from the 13th century. 

While Halifax is still digging out from over 70cm of snow this week alone, the spring wildflowers are in full bloom all over Cyprus. Including inside the castle. 

The Turkish and Cypriot Turkish flags fly in tandem all over North Cyprus, including from one of the castle's bastions. 

The most gruesome part of the castle is the dungeon, complete with horrific factual stories of those who were tortured and killed there. 

The oldest mosque in town provided a quick peek inside. 

And amidst a population that is pretty well competely Muslim, a few brave Anglicans maintain a brave presence wth a small, peaceful church. 

We had heard there was a beach further west along the coast from Kutenai, so in the late afternoon we set out to find it. It didn't turn out to be much of a beach. But we did find the ruins of an old church that looked stunning in the setting sunlight. 

And a rugged coastal view that was quite spectacular. 

So that's the kind of day it has been: logistics and neat sights. We ended it at a low-key restaurant recommended by Lonely Planet, and I did a late run through the Old Town.  And that's a wrap on March 19th. Our last touring day will start early, so good night!

Day 5 (March 18, 2015): No flamingos, but cats galore!

There's a TV ad for a sleeping aid in which a lady raises a flag in the morning that reads, "I SLEPT!"  That's how I felt this morning at 8:15AM.  We had hoped to be up by 7:00AM, but after literally next-to-no sleep in three days, a solid night's sleep justified the late start.  By 10:15AM, we were getting our rental car.  By 11:15AM, we had finally figured out how to get out of Nicosia and onto the Motorway A-1 to Limassol.  The mix of one-way streets, street names in Greek, and driving on the left made for a frustrating city exit.

The 90km drive to Cyrpus' southern coast showed us the mix of mountain, field and forest that comprises the interior.  Somehow we thought it would be arid, but it was very lush and green.

Limassol is a typical beach resort town with a few historical treasures thrown in.  Mile after mile of hotels and resorts comprise the coastline northeast of the city.  Our Crowne Plaza resort is the closest to the city centre. 

A well developed sea-front promenade extends from the centre to the resort area

which we explored this afternoon and which served as a good jogging route for me tonight.

We had lunch at the hotel, then drove into the centre to do some exploring on foot.  The 14th century Medieval castle,

the 15th century Grand Mosque,

and a more recent Greek church,

all serve as highlights of the Old Town.

From there we set out to explore the Akrotiri Peninsula west of Limassol. Passing orange orchards along the way, our first stop was the town of Kolossi, which sports a castle from the 15th century. 

Then it was on to the town of Akrotiri in search of flamingos that call a huge salt lake home.  We saw lots of them, but from quite a distance.  Not to worry: what we missed in flamingos, we made up for in cats -- the Malcolm Cat Sanctuary had tons of them! 

And speaking of cats, the next stop was the Monastery of Saint Nicholas of the Cats.  Waaay back, when then monastery was being built amidst a snake-ridden drought, cats were brought in from Egypt to deal with the snakes so the workers could focus on building the place.  Hence the name. The six nuns who run it these days, selling jams and honey, were saying afternoon Mass when we were there. So all we got to see were some cats (of course) and a mosaic of Saint Nicholas.

And here are two odd-ends that I can't weave into my story of the day. The first is just a building that caught my eye in the Old Town, showing the traditional blue/white Greek influence on Cyprus.

And the second shows what often gets lost in translation, no matter what the country!

The day wrapped up with a Greek dinner next to the castle in the centre of town.  Tomorrow we return our rental car to Nicosia and go over to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to conclude our visit to this historic island.

Day 4 (March 17, 2015): Cyprus, at last!

We left Nova Scotia early Saturday morning with the ultimate goal of getting to Cyprus. And today, it came to pass.

We were up at 3:15AM this morning to get a 4:30AM taxi from Avanos to Kayseri, the largest city in Cappadocia. Our flight to Istanbul aboard Pegaus Airlines departed on time at 6:30AM and arrived early at Istanbul's Sobiha Gocken Airport.

Pam boarding our Pegasus flight out of Kayseri 

The snow-covered peaks and thick forests of Turkey were quite evident from the air along the way. 

Turkey's snowy peaks 

Istanbul from the air

By 9:00AM, we were on our connecting flight to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which landed on time at 10:30AM.

The mountainous ridge of Cyprus' north coast. 

Interestingly, the world doesn't recognize it!

At this point, a very brief history lesson is in order. The bloody conflict that ripped apart Cyprus 40 years ago was due to the Turks and Cyrpriot Greeks battling it out for the island. The capital, Nicosia, was at the centre of the conflict. In 1974, the UN divided the island - and the capital itself - into two parts: the Cypriot-controlled south, known as the Republic of Cyprus, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which no one except Turkey recognizes to this day. To the world, the Turks continue to "occupy" northern Cyprus. Even Ercan Airport, which we flew into, is unrecognized as existing by the outside world!

Okay, back to the Burton day... We cleared Customs and took a cab to one of the two pedestrian border points in Nicosia: Ledras Street. We pulled our suitcases over the "Green Line" with its no-man's land, and checked in with both officials of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the Republic of Cyprus. The latter would only refer to the former as "the occupiers"!  

Once on the other side, I went into a post office and asked for a clerk to call us a cab. We were at our Hilton Park Hotel by noon.  Having not slept a wink last night, we went down to the pool area and just vegged out there in the 20C warmth until 2:00PM, including a light lunch of milkshakes. 

R&R at the Hilton Park Nicosia 

We then took a cab back to Ledras Street, which is the main pedestrian street in town. We scouted out some of the Greek Army checkpoints and some rare glimpses into the Green Line's no-man's land, where eerie, abandoned buildings continue to crumble, 40 years after the UN created the division. 

A Greek Army checkpoint on the Green Line

A UN checkpoint on the Green Line

An building abandoned in the no man's land 40 years ago. Zoom in to the bullet holes inside. 

The highlight of the afternoon was a 2km self-directed walking tour of the old part of the city. Here are some highlights.

Omeriye Mosque

Archbishop's Palace

Recycled glass "inukshuk" from 1985

Interesting re-use for a toilet!

Pam did retail therapy at THE department store of Cyprus: Dedanhams. Then we had dinner at Loxandra's, a well-known Cypriot pub.

The kebabs and tzatziki were amazing. Tomorrow we will take on the challenge of driving on the left-hand side and will head to Limassol on the south coast. 

Stay tuned for more about this remarkable island.