Holiday in Cyprus (3): Kyrenia
On Tuesday, I was woken at 4.30 am by the broadcasting of the Islamic call to prayer, a reminder that I was in north Cyprus and not south Cyprus. At 9 am, we met our guide for the northern part of our tour of the island: Sezain Patterson whose English was brilliant on account of spending years in Britain and marrying an Englishman. The four of us on the North and South Voyages Jules Verne tour were joined by four other Brits staying at another hotel and doing a VJV tour that only covers the north. This will be the arrangement for the first three days of our holiday.
Today we visited locations in and around Kyrenia (or Girne as it is called locally).
This city is set around and above a superb natural harbour. Founded by the Achaens after the Trojan War, its long and chequered past involves rules by the Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, Ottoman and British empires.
Our first visit was to St Hilarion Castle, located a short distance south-west of the city. Originally a a watch tower to warn against Arab raiders, following the taking of the island by Richard the Lionheart in 1191, the location was developed during the period of the crusades by the Frankish Lusignans and abandoned when the Venetians took the island in 1489. The highest point of the ruins is 732 metres and only reached by taking some 230 steps which are very tough and uneven (at least there are handrails).
Following such a climb, a homemade lemonade drink was welcome. Officially the currency of northern Cyprus is the Turkish lira, but euros and sterling are accepted too, which is just as well because I have only brought euros.
The second visit of the day was to Bellapais Abbey, located in a pretty little village just south of Kyrenia. The first monks here were the Augustinians who had to flee Jerusalem when Saladin occupied the holy city in 1187. When the Ottomans took over the island in 1571, the abbey was closed and the church ceased to be Catholic and became Orthodox. The church stopped operating when the Turks invaded in 1974.
The location is home to the best Gothic architecture on the island and highlights are the 14th century cloister and a magnificent refectory.
After these two visits, we drove into Kyrenia to have lunch sitting outside the Chimera restaurant – owned by the same family as our hotel – by the picturesque harbour side.
Our third and last visit of the day was to Kyrenia Castle. The earliest construction on the site could have been as far back as the 7th century BC, but major developments occurred under the Lusignans and the Venetians. Ironically, however, the local people surrendered without a fight to the Ottomans in 1570. During the British colonial period, the site was used as a prison and a police academy.
Inside the castle is the Shipwreck Museum which houses the world’s oldest ship complete with its ancient cargo of some 400 amphoras. The ship was sunk around 300 BC and salvaged in 1967. It reminded me of the “Mary Rose” (1545) in Portsmouth and the “Vasa” (1628) in Stockholm. Though the ship in Kyrenia is much smaller than the other two vessels, it is much, much older.
Dinner was again at the hotel where we are virtually the only guests and again a choice from a three-course menu with two options for each course. But this evening we started with complimentary welcome cocktails and one of our group celebrated a birthday and insisted on buying us another round of cocktails and wine with the meal. I went with the flow …