Cyrpus was never on my list of must-visits but tempted by winter sun, blue skies and the promise of some good hiking persuaded me.
We went for 8 nights, we didn’t have a car. Cyprus has good intercity buses but buses to villages and the mountains are very infrequent. It’s not possible to travel by bus from North to South but is easy by foot. On the North side there are frequent Dolmuses (shared taxi-Mini buses) to main destinations. First stop Larnaca.
I wouldn’t want to be in Larnaca in holiday season but in March it was quiet and pleasant (especially if you ignore the big chain coffee shops and restaurants bordering Finikoudes Beach)
The church of St Lazarus ( beautifully lit at night) was our first stop and what a wonderful interior and iconostasis. In the crypt lies the tomb of St Lazarus, when I visited a priest and 3 nuns stood, chanting around the coffin, hauntingly beautiful.
The Old Town is worth a wander; a few craft workshops, pretty buildings. We chatted to a Cypriot who had returned from London and was renovating an old listed arched stone house. To make it into a boutique hotel, hopefully open in 2025, it will be called Casa Antonio.
The Pierdes Museum, housed in a colonial-style building is the oldest private museum in Cyprus, an archaeological collection initiated by its founder in the 1800s to prevent them from going overseas. There are some embroidered textiles displayed in chests in the corridor.
The next stop was Hala Sultan Tekke, a wonderful and significant Mosque built on the site of the death ( by falling from a mule ) of Muhammed’s foster aunt on the shores of the Salt Lake.
Locals advised us to walk there, the walk is long, and a lot of it is not particularly pretty. Much better to take a bus to the junction with the main road and save your walking for the pretty bits from the mosque towards the aqueduct. It’s nice to approach the mosque by walking along the lake shore to fully appreciate the setting and the lush vegetation that surrounds it.
To enter the mosque grounds your knees and shoulders need to be covered. They don’t accept a jumper or anything makeshift wrapped around your waist.
Having walked there. We saw a sign which said aqueduct 4 kilometres and decided to do that, despite being close to the airport it was lovely with spring flowers and views of the lake However, the paths weren’t marked and we ended up going a long way round. eventually making it to the aqueduct (in the suburbs of Larnaca) which is close to the end of the Salt Lake trail, another 4 km to the beginning of the Salt Lake Trail, and on the way with viewing and sunset points on the way. We walked over 30,000 steps that day.
We ate in Souvlaki.gr, unpretentious and good value. We had a glass of wine in Dio Rock Café Bar, full of memorabilia, old furniture and an impressive 1920s, art deco chandelier that the owner told me came from a Coptic church in Egypt. We stayed in Hai Hotel.
