Cyprus was my original goal during this trip, but due to the difficulty to find direct flights which would not be too expensive I had to be creative. Hence the stops in Italy and Bucharest along the way. Funny thing is that there was an air traffic controller strike in France which could have messed up my first flight, but eventually all went well.
As you know, Cyprus is still divided in two, following a bitter civil war. The north is home of the Turkish settlers and the south is inhabited by the Greek Cypriots. I was able to visit only the southern part of the island (I never even got close of Nicosia, the capital which lies at the border between the two states) but even there, you have a lot of remnants of the Turkish presence when the two communities lived in peace.
For example, next to Larnaka is a salt lake, on the shores of which is located a lovely mosque called Hala Sultan Tekke's mosque. It turns out that this mosque is even more important than anything I'd imagined.
This place is where was buried Umm Haram, the wife of a companion of Mohammed. She died in this place accompanying the Arab raids on the island during the 7th century.
In the XVIIIth century, the Ottomans rediscovered the tomb and built this mosque around it. Today, it's a fantastic solemn and peaceful place, a bit otherworldly-looking thanks to the salt lake shimmering in the distance and also very friendly thanks to the dozens and dozens of cats who roam freely around.
Speaking of cat, it's worth mentioning that the cats are everywhere in Cyprus and feel very much at home. Legend has it that the island was infested by snakes and that Helena, the mother of Constantine, had thousands of cats imported from Egypt to contain the plage and since then the cats have made this island their home, and as you can see, they are not shy at all:
Larnaka is also home to one of those typical small eastern churches which shine bright with gold and smell like incenses:
The real HQ of my stay in Cyprus was Limassol, a busy coastal town where you hear more Russians language in the beaches than any Greek or English.
It has everything I remembered from a Greek town: the hustle and bustle of the cars, the cats everywhere, the little one-storey houses surrounded by decrepit projects, and the shiny new structures conceived to host who-know-what-banker in search of a lenient tax haven.
Including a new marina in development where you can invest if you have a few millions on the side:
The old town is quite nice though with some obsolete corner shops and taverns:
I really liked to see that some houses had a falcon-shaped kite on top of their roof to keep the pigeons away, rather than the usual scarecrow. I found it really poetic, and wonder why this trend has not caught up more.
And there are some nice arts on the walls here and there:
Of course, I explored the Old Castle of Limassol. It does not look like much from outside between it was severely refurbished by Ottomans rulers but it was much bigger and stronger when the Franks and the Crusaders ruled over the island.
The second day of my trip I also went to the mountains in the center of the city, and we explored a bit the little villages around there.
After the noise and heat of the coast, the calm and serenity of those biblical landscapes were more than welcome.
Since this article is getting really long, I'll keep for the next article the visit I made to Kourion, one of the main archelogical site of the island.