Adventure in Cyprus

In order to renew our visas for our last three months, we went to the nearest foreign country, Cyprus. It’s beautiful, with plants and climate like Southern California at this time of year.

Nicosia is the capital city of both North Cyprus (under Turkish occupation since 1974) and the Republic of Cyprus in the south. Turkish is spoken in the north and Greek in the south. There is a wide no-man’s land separating the two parts of the city, under UN control. We landed in North Cyprus at night, went to the checkpoint and then had to drag our suitcases through the abandoned area to the other side, where we were able to take a taxi to our hotel in the south section of the city.

Old Nicosia is enclosed by huge walls built by the Venetians in about 1500. The walls and bastions are still intact, and the few gates in and out of the old city are still in use.

Because of the long “administration” of the British, cars drive on the left side of the road, and most cars are right-hand drive. Because of that and the signs in Greek, we were a little disoriented at times in the south! But we loved the many beautiful museums there. We also loved seeing Greek orthodox churches and a whole museum full of icons and mosaics in the south. We also loved the Cyprus Museum, with exhibits dating back to 10,000 BC.

In the northern section of the city Turkish is spoken. There are no Christian churches remaining. Some of the beautiful gothic churches built from 1200 to 1350 still stand but are in service now as mosques. It is a little sad to see all the art painted out (representations of people or animals are forbidden in Islam) and very strange to see a minaret stuck on the side of a gothic church complete with flying buttresses. But of course the Turks have always been the soldiers of Islam and their victories always included replacing the existing religion with Islam. (That is one reason for the enduring hard feelings between Turkish and Greek neighbor states.) In the north we also saw an old caravansary (inn for caravans) built in 1572. (Shown above.)

We had only one day to see the sights, and we nearly walked our feet off. That evening we relaxed with some Greek food at a little café near our hotel. Our return flight left very early the next morning, but we returned with great memories—and new visas!