Last evening, after an exhausting day trundling around in
the heat, we sat out in the beautiful, cool yard of the Betul Guest House for a
couple of hours, dining on pastries and fruit, complemented with a local
white. After a sound sleep and another
delicious breakfast of omelette, breads and fruits, we walked out of the
Famagusta Old Town and boarded our mini-bus for Nicosia. An interesting journey; the bus only seats
eighteen, with fold-down seats in the aisle when the regular seating fills up,
but at one stage we had twenty-five on board, with the driver packing luggage
around his legs. However it was
efficient, quick and cheap.
On arrival at Nicosia bus terminal we were met by our host
Orhan and driven to our apartment, a large, three bedroom unit sitting on the
top floor of an older building (but with a lift!), with two bathrooms, a
separate lounge-dining area, a big kitchen and three terraces, two of which
overlook the old town walls. After dumping our luggage we headed off to the old
town to explore the narrow, historic streets and lanes, lined with mosques,
Frankish ruins, a medina-style market and lots and lots of cafes and shops for
the tourists. We entered the Selimiye
Mosque, whose prominent minarets are visible from our apartment. Formerly a Christian church, building
commenced in 1209 but progressed slowly, until Louis IX of France dropped by in
1248 on his way to the sixth crusade and threw some money at it, however it
still took another 78 years to complete and was consecrated in 1326 as the
Church of Agia Sophia. An interesting
feature is that four marble columns from the ancient city of Salamis (which we
visited yesterday) were relocated into the apse (another such column stands in
the town square that we passed through as we entered the old town). When the
Ottomans took over Cyprus in 1571 they stripped the building of its Christian
contents and adornments, turned the two bell towers into minarets and it became
a mosque. It was interesting to stand in
the austere, plain interior and try to picture how it would have looked as a
Byzantine basilica, with all its trappings.
On to the Belediye Paxari, the local municipal market, where
we bought some fruit and salad vegetables, including a kilogram of delicious
figs for €2 (a bit under three dollars).
Next stop was the Buyuk Han, once a caravanserai, built in 1572 by the
first Ottoman governor of Cyprus for travellers and traders passing through the
city, with accommodation and stables, as well as spaces to trade their wares
and socialise with fellow travellers.
The central courtyard, which also houses a small Islamic chapel, is now
a bustling hive of shops, stalls and outdoor restaurants – a perfect place to
stop and enjoy a lunch of dolmades, spinach pastries and salad. After lunch we meandered through the narrow
streets before finding our way back to our apartment, pausing just a short walk
from our digs to check out the “green line”, the border between Turkish and
Greek Cyprus, which we will cross when we leave Nicosia on Tuesday morning.
Dinner was chicken, tomatoes, cucumber, figs, nectarine and
fried haloumi from the market, drizzled with olive oil and caramelised
balsamic, and washed down with a 2002 Salamis chardonnay (provided by our host),
accompanied in part by the haunting Call to Prayer from the mosque. Then out on to our largest terrace to
contemplate the Nicosia skyline. Bliss!
Tomorrow: we will find another mini-bus to take us north, to
the sea again and the ancient town of Kyrenia.
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