Another chicken and fresh fruit dinner last evening, an early
night and an easy day today! We set off
for a walk around Nicosia – or Lefkosa as it is called in Turkish - this
morning, alongside the old town wall to the Roccas Bastion, where you can look
across to the Greek side of the border.
It is a military zone and there are signs warning against taking
photos. The old United Nations lookout
post, high on stilts, is still in the no-man's land between the border fences, uninhabited
and looking a bit the worse for wear. We
then walked through the very run-down Arabmhet quarter and back to the centre
of the old town, past the Selimeye Mosque to the Haydarpasha Mosque, originally
built as St Catherine’s Church in the 14th century. Unfortunately it was closed. Then to the adjacent Lapidary Museum which
exhibits – and explains – various Gothic and renaissance columns, capitals,
sarcophagi, windows and ornamental stonework within its lovely 15th
century building.
We stopped for the best seafood stew meal ever, fighting of
the kittens who seemed to think they were entitled to share it with us (although
one seemed more interested in having a fight with a feather), then to the old
market for a few supplies for our last meal in Nicosia before winding our way
back to our digs for a relaxing afternoon.
Tomorrow – a taxi back to Larnaca airport to collect our
rental car, then a drive through the centre of Cyprus and over the Troodos
Mountains to our destination on the western seaboard, Paphos.
No comments:
Post a Comment