Holiday in Cyprus (1): introduction
Top of my bucket list is – so long as I have reasonable health and wealth – to have visited as many countries as my age. I’m 70 today and I’m off to Cyprus which will be my 72nd country. It is an organised tour with the company Voyages Jules Verne and involves equal time in the north and the south.
Cyprus is a small nation: an island in the eastern Mediterranean which at its extremes is just 150 miles long from east to west and 100 miles wide from north to south. The estimated population is only just over a million – barely half that of Northern Ireland – although there are almost as many Cypriots living off the island as on it.
In spite of its small size, its location has given it a complicated history with successive occupations by the Persians, Egyptians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Franks, Venetians, Ottomans, and British. Independence came in 1960 with a constitution which shared power between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities in the ratio 70:30.
But the new state lasted less than a decade and a half when Turkey invaded the north of Cyprus in 1974 occupying 36% of the island.
June 25th, 2018 at 2:56 pm
Happy Birthday, Roger!
have an enjoyable time in Cyprus.
June 29th, 2018 at 1:03 am
Belated birthday wishes, and happy holidays.
Nadine.