First things first. Mom, we're safely back in the EU now.
Our little hotel (9 rooms) in the heart of Kyrenia's old city is charming. The desk clerk/bartender/breakfast cook (small hotel = small staff) told us last night that we were the first Americans he's seen at the hotel. We've had many comments like this in the 48 hours we spent in North Cyprus.
We had choices for breakfast today. I opted for the Turkish breakfast (no such thing as too many olives), while Greg had the English breakfast.
The view from our door.
We walked around Kyrenia for a couple of hours to see the old natural harbor and castle.
The type of little streets we were trapped in last night.
Kyrenia, founded by Mycenaean Greeks around 1200 BC, was one of the ancient city kingdoms of Cyprus.
In Venetian times, a heavy chain was strung across the harbor entrance to keep masted warships out. The round stone structure center right is one of the old chain towers.
The Byzantine castle was built in the 7th century for protection from Arab raids. It was captured in 1191 by Richard the Lionheart on his way to the Crusades. He sold it to the Knights Templar, after which it fell into the hands of the usual succession of Cyprus occupiers (Lusignans, Genoese, Venetians. Ottomans, British).
The castle is immense. Like the walls of Famagusta, there are parallel walls filled with rubble. It was surrounded by a moat in medieval times and accessible only by this bridge, ending in a drawbridge and portcullis. That's still the sole entry point, but the moat is dry and paved over now.
Former guardrooms off of the main courtyard house a small museum dedicated to the Girne Shipwreck. Carbon dating of almonds stored on the ship indicate that it sank a mile offshore from Kyrenia around 288 BC. It was discovered in 1967 and brought to the castle a year later.
The contents were remarkably well preserved. From studying the ship and cargo, including 400 wine amphorae, seeds, grains, nuts and millstones (the last serving as both ballast and cargo), archaeologists have been able to determine ports of call, age of the ship when it sank, and its construction method. The best part was that the ship's hull is in a climate controlled room, quite refreshing on a warm morning.
We retrieved our car and found our next destination easily. Bellapais Abbey is a masterpiece of Gothic at and arguably the most beautiful Gothic building in the Near East. Started in the 12th century, most of the ruins date to the 13th and 14th centuries. It was built by Canons Regular, custodians of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. These Augustinian monks fled the Holy Land after its 1187 fall to the Syrian/Egyptian Sultan, Saladin. In addition to serving as a monastery, it was also the royal residence of King Hugh III during the 14th century.
In the late 14th century, the Genoese raided Kyrenia and stole Bellapais's removable valuables. A century later, the Venetians controlled Cyprus, and the Abbey residents had abandoned the Rules of their Order. After yet another century, the Ottomans conquered Kyrenia and gave the Abbey to the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus. The Abbey fell into disrepair, while the abbey church served as the parish church for the surrounding village. In 1976 the remaining Orthodox clergy were forced to leave.
The Roman sarcophagus was used as a lavabo, or trough for washing.
The church itself remains in good repair. The ruins of the crumbling Gothic cloister are lovely, with delicate pointed arches and a quartet of tall cypress trees. Stairs lead up to a rooftop offering wonderful views downs to Kyrenia and the sea. It’s a quiet and reflective place, storybook picturesque.
In the same village is the former home of Lawrence Durrell. I owe him a debt of gratitude, as I learned about Bellapais Abbey from his book, Bitter Lemons, a memoir about his time in Cyprus during the 1950s. While Greg went to find a geocache, I went looking for Durrell's yellow house.
The Tree of Idleness, an oft-referenced place in Durrell's book where the village men congregated to drink and gossip, is next to the Abbey and at the base of the narrow steep lane leading up to his house.
We continued on with a quest to find the annual Kyrenia Olive Festival. We'd found little information online, but knew it was centered in the appropriately named small village of Zeytinlik (“zeytin” means olive!) during the first week of October. There are reportedly musicians and dancers, food (of course!) puppet makers, craftsmen, etc.
We eventually found the village and the festival. Unfortunately, many of the booths were just setting up and the big ticket items on the agenda (billiard tournament, senior folk dance team, and food competition) were in the evening.
We ate samples of olives, preserved fruits and a sweet that looked like broken twigs. The core was almonds, the outside made from the juice of grapes mixed with a little flour. They dip the long concoction many times (like making a candle) to get a thick coating.
We shared a cup of corn for lunch. The guy would scoop out a paper cup of corn, add salt, butter and cheese, then invert the cup into a bigger plastic cup and shake vigorously. Sort of like making a Bond martini.
Then, voilà, a cup of corn. You could garnish with lemon juice, vinegar, mustard or ketçup. We went for the plain version.
Of course there were also olives, but they were home made and to my regret, we knew we couldn't bring them home.
St. Hilarion Castle lies a few miles southeast of Kyrenia in the Kyrenian Mountains. Better preserved than its sister castle, Buffavento, it occupies a strategic location over the mountain pass connecting Kyrenia to the capital, Nicosia. Originally built by the Byzantine, it was expanded into extensive fortifications and the castle during the 10th and 11th centuries. We had planned to visit this afternoon, but ran out of time.
The closest we got was a view from the northern side of its towers.
And then came the drive to Nicosia. We reached the outskirts easily, but got massively lost when we couldn't reconcile our printed Google maps directions and distances with the unlabeled city streets. We needed to find the checkpoint to cross the buffer zone back into the Republic of Cyprus. We finally got close enough to the Green Line that a phone app pinpointed our location. Greg navigated by watching the arrow move on the screen and telling me where to turn. We found the checkpoint, passed through the Turkish passport control and were waved through the Cyprus side without even slowing down. Suddenly the GPS worked again. Yea!
We found street parking around the corner from our apartment, and then realized we didn't need to look that hard. Sidewalk parking seems to be an acceptable option.
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