Ayia Napa, Famagusta, Cyprus
I may be a culture vulture, but I am not averse to an
occasional beach day. Cyprus is
extremely popular for beach vacations, especially with British who seem to make
up a majority of the tourists here, perhaps nostalgic for one of their former
colonies. It is said to have been very
popular with Russians too until two years ago when they were barred from travel
to EU countries. So I suspect most of the people in Cyprus who sound like
Russians may well be Ukrainian.
The hotel I booked for our last night in Cyprus, the Corfu
Hotel, was in the beach mega resort of Ayia Napa, probably the biggest on the
island with a good honky-tonk atmosphere and amusement park rides. Rodrigo really wanted to go on some rides at
night, but that didn’t really fit with a super early start in the morning for
our flight to Athens. I promised him we’d
go to some theme parks in California in the fall.
There’s not much of culture or history in Ayia Napa, but the
town dos have a large sculpture park on its outskirts that is free to visit.
The hundreds of mostly very large, mostly recent, and mostly stone statues are
scattered about a dry slope above the see and were created by several dozen
different artists from around Europe and the world, not a single one I had ever
heard of before.
A short distance from Ayia Napa is Cape Greco, the easternmost
point in the Republic of Cyprus and southeastern corner of the island. The long
unicorn horn shaped Karpas Peninsula goes farther east, but it is in the
Turkish-occupied side of the island.
Rodrigo
noted that Cape Greco is the farthest east he’s ever been in Europe. The cape constitutes a small national park
with beautiful bluffs over the sea, both rocky and sandy beaches, a natural
arch, a seaside chapel, and some sea caves – all very photogenic.
For some actual time on the beach and in the water, we
headed a few miles north to Protaras Beach, a long east-facing stretch of nice
sand backed by a beachside promenade and a long line of resort hotels, like
Paphos populated almost entirely by Brits who seem to like lounge chairs by
hotel pools much more than they like the actual beach. Plenty of high adrenaline
activities on the water were on offer. Rodrigo was very intrigued, but I’m not
one to spend much money to go very fast on some inflatable device pulled by a
speedboat.
In the evening we headed toward the town center in Ayia Napa
for our last night on Cyprus. One restaurant with a dinner show of traditional
Greek and Cypriot dance caught our eye. I’m very surprised that after more than
three weeks in Greece and Cyprus we had not yet encountered live music or a
tourist-oriented show at any of the places we ate. I felt like I needed to see at least one on
my trip. It was touristy but fun, and my
meal of Kleftiko Lamb Shank was superb.
2025-05-23