How NOT to rest in Cyprus

A small anti-guide on how to go to the island, where everyone goes to relax, and spend time there so that after the vacation, working in the office seems like a rest. In short, don’t do that.

My route:

Nicosia

In the morning there is practically no one in the center. It is so quiet that you can sit down to listen to the birds sing.

Until 11-12 hours only grocery stores are open. Cypriots are not used to straining, getting up early and doing something there.

The only salvation for those who woke up early like bears in winter from hunger is shawarma. Rather, its Greek subspecies is gyros. The locals insist that this is a fundamentally different dish, although the only difference is is that they also add potatoes fries to “Authenticos Ellinikos Gyros”. All!

I sat down to have breakfast in front of the cutest graffiti.

The whole center is such a low-rise building.

Because of this, the panorama of the city looks rather sad. So you can’t even guess if it’s a town in Africa or the capital of an EU member state.

For the first couple of days, it is very unusual for cars to drive in the opposite lane.)

Sometimes these houses are in good condition, and then walking the streets between them is very pleasant.

Sometimes not really.

And closer to the middle of the city, most of the houses look like brick ghosts. The point is these barricades.

The essence of is that Cypriots are of two types – Greeks and Turks. This is a radically different mentality, with all that it implies. In 1960, Great Britain gave Cyprus independence, bequeathing to the guys to live together and develop a young state together. They were enough for 3 years, after which regular skirmishes began, and in the end, in 1974, the island was divided in half: the northern part was kept by the invaders to support their Turkish troops, and the south – the invading Greek. The situation persists to this day, and Nicosia is divided exactly in half by the demilitarized buffer zone – the so-called Green Line (you can see it directly in the photo, in the middle, it is really green).

Not everyone likes that the EU supports the original Republic of Cyprus and not the unrecognized puppet Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. You can even guess who exactly.

Some kind of underground lithograph printing house.

Everywhere there are inscriptions in Russian, and in general many locals speak Russian quite well. Not for the sake of culture, of course, but for the sake of the value of the euro, which tourists from the post-Soviet space first save up for six months, and and then drain for a week of vacation.

Once upon a time, life was clearly in full swing here, but now there are a lot of abandoned houses.

I noticed that they have a joke like this: paint barrels on the barricades in the colors of the Greek flag.

And who is so small with us, and tore out a whole piece of the beam with reinforcement and tried to escape? Booger like that. : 3

There are a lot of such dead ends. I do not envy my neighbors on the street, found themselves on opposite sides.

In order to get to the Turkish side, you just need to show your passport at one of the border crossing points. One of them is located in the very center, at the end of the main street Ledras.

Bazaar.

Another bazaar.

Mosque.

And another bazaar. In principle, this was all very expected.

Cool graffiti isn’t.

Cool coffee shops are even more unexpected. I am impressed.

Hakuna matata guys.

On old houses, these drawings seem even more cute. It’s a pity, there is not much of such goodness here.

Sometimes there are also normal areas.

Arcade of the main mosque. At the entrance it was written that they had namaz there now and that the infidels were asked not to disturb, so I did not see the interior.

The columns are tired.

I make my way through the huckster back.

Who the hell, who, who buys all this? They would not have stood here if they had not had buyers. They take each other’s hands, or what?

What a Turk is sarcasm, for a European is black humor.

Interestingly, the idea with this canopy on the Greek side was spied on or is it traditional for them?

There are many meze restaurants. This is when you do not want to eat, but you would like to sit in the company in some institution at a table. You come in here, and instead of normal dishes, they bring you small snacks (in fact, meze). Like Spanish tapas, in general.

I returned to the Greek part to go to their brand new gallery “Leventis”.

Judging by the biographies of artists, Cyprus as a whole began to move only 100 years ago. It is unrealistic to find works of Cypriots at least two hundred years ago, only Greeks and all sorts of Europeans. Before that, as if there was no movement at all, there were only farmers, winemakers and nothing else.

A huge canvas 18 meters long called “The World of Cyprus” Adamantios Diamantis, one of the founders of the Cypriot school of fine arts. Written somewhere around 1970 year.

With the onset of darkness, the city is empty again.

The only popular night entertainment among people – sweepstakes and lotteries.

Breathalyzer in a sandwich.

I wonder if this is censorship, the product is out, or a discount on naked mannequins?

“Porn with food. Soon”. O_o

Limassol

Finally got to the coast. Although yes, this is an island, wherever you go, in the end you will find yourself by the sea.

Small fortress. But there is a beach. Not every prince can boast of this.

In the old town, different establishments skillfully fit into the environment.

Although sometimes not very skillful. Just fit in.

Typically dirty streets. As I understand it, the main thing for Cypriots is that there is no garbage underfoot, everything else is ok.

There are graffiti here more meaningful than those that I was used to seeing in Nicosia. Sometimes even large murals are found.

Although the opportunity to just bomb the surface with tags is also not missed here.

Bold experiments in Greek cuisine: instead of pieces of fries, they put some kind of country-style potatoes in my gyros. Okay, well, at least they haven’t come up with a special name for this undeniably fundamentally new dish.

A large beautiful temple among the dirty old quarters. I recognize the Orthodox.

Not visible in this photo, but the point about dogs is also violated. What, then, should you say, “bingo”?

The embankment is the most beautiful place in this city.

Night lighting in Limassol is poor.

Even the busiest streets suddenly become almost empty.

Roller skating out of town in search of the ancient city of Kourion.

I wonder what the sculptor was thinking while doing this work?

In short, I was driving like this, driving, the heat was terrible, and then bam – a whole wall of cacti, hung with fruits. At first I even thought that I already had hallucinations. But no, real, prickly. The locals make juice from them, which is quite tasty.

In Cyprus, there are usually about 300 sunny days a year, so hot water is not supplied here and is not heated in boilers, but simply always keep some volume in a barrel on the roof, where it becomes hot by itself.

I stopped at the winemaking museum. The first room is a dump of obsolete tools.

Of the more or less interesting here, only religious things. Have you ever wondered what was the symbol of Christianity in the time of Jesus?

Well, yes, you guessed it already, they had wine. The myth that the main character knew how to transform water into wine impressed the natives much more than the treatment of colds and other terminally ill patients.

Wine regions map. A very simple solution, but during the tasting it is really fun to see where this or that variety comes from. So, okay, and a little spoiler: if you’re not in Cyprus, be sure to try Commandaria, without exaggeration it was the best dessert wine in my life.

Colossus Castle.

Of course, I expected something more epic from such a name, but then I suddenly realized that for the XIII century it was really a colossus. In Russia, at that time, “palaces” were sawn out of wood, and here there is such a block of stone as high as a five-story building. Compare these guys upstairs with the thickness of the walls, there are 2-3 meters of hike.

Actually, Kourion. Rather, the place where he was.

Only the foundations of some buildings and an amphitheater on a hill have remained from the ancient city.

Well, and a good beach. Here it has hardly changed much in just a couple of thousand years.

Larnaca

Along the entire center there is a long boulevard with palm trees, on one side of which there are mainly hotels and other apartments, and on the other there is a long beach. In general, the Mediterranean version of the Georgian Batumi.

Looks like a seal man farm.

When viewed from the ground, it looks like a cheerful entertainment center. And from the air, it looks more like some kind of market with parking in the backyard.

Old Larnaca. It looks like they usually set up a market here, but only a few outlets are open today.

The streets are dirty again. Classics of Cyprus.

Half of the apartments in the center are inhabited by tourists. I don’t know if it’s expensive for locals to live in the center, or simply too profitable to rent.

Some even build themselves large multi-storey buildings, and then rent out a couple of floors.

Moreover, the noisy center lasts only kilometers, then there is a quiet embankment and the same quiet quarters.

Roller skating to the airport.

There is a large salt lake just outside the city. I was intrigued because I read about whole flocks of flamingos and that birds from all over Europe flock here to winter. I come to this lake, and there is no water in it. Absolutely.

There is only salt to the very horizon. And instead of flamingos, people walk along the bottom. Yes, people do not imagine such a vacation when you tell them “I am going to Cyprus”.