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Touring Ancient Monuments
Aug. 19th, 2011 10:45 amWednesday night we repaired to the Nostalgia Restaurant, where I had garlic mushrooms as a starter and kleftiki (slow-cooked neck of lamb). I enjoyed the garlic mushrooms, and the lamb was definitely slow-cooked, but I found it a bit bland. But, no shortage of meat. A uniform aspect of the restaurants that we have been to so far is that the vegetables seem to be uniformly a floret of cauliflower, a floret of broccoli (or a few green beans) and a couple of strips of carrot. One gets the feeling that Greek Cypriots just aren't that comfortable with vegetables as a separate serving, so they stick to the same simple principles for all restaurants. "Blueprint copying" as it were. Perfectly edible, but not particularly imaginative. Meat, by contrast, they love, and the various traditional dishes are served up in generous portions. Given my experiences so far, I would say that mezes are the way to go.
On Thursday morning we went to see the Paphos mosaics, a World Heritage site that I suspect has brought Paphos a fair amount of cash from the EU. The difficult thing here is not to launch into a somewhat tedious entire history of Cyprus -- the nub of which appears to be "the Cypriots get it in the neck from whichever empire happens to be ruling the Mediterranean at the time". Nea Paphos as represented by these buildings covers roughly the 4th century BC to the 4th century AD. So even before it came to prominence under the Ptolemies and later the Romans, Cyprus had a long history of city statedoms. Nea Paphos won the prize in 4th cent BC because it was the closest to Alexandria.
The Heritage site houses two main buildings of interest, the villa of Theseus, a 10,000 square metre villa whose major mosaic depicts Theseus and the minotaur. The other major building is the House of Dionysus. Then there is the amphitheatre and the accompanying ruins of the local hospital, and, nearby, a Frankish castle built in the 12th century and destoyed by earthquake less than 20 years later.
So, even these 'old' buildings are probably built on a couple of layers of older homes. The stones were systematically re-used for later residences, but a fair amount of floor-plan remains.
We had a snack at one of the many portside cafés, which was quite pleasant. However the tourist shops are uniformly depressing, and probably the most reminiscent of 'the Torremolinos look'. A pile of tacky stuff probably made in the far east and all bought from the same wholesale importers-exporters. Worse, when you walk round, you are followed incredibly unsubtly (although I suspect that they think they are being subtle) by a store employee to check that you aren't shoplifting.
The portside also has a number of timeshare salesmen/women (I always fancy going up to one of them and asking them earnestly whether they have life insurance and then trying to sell them a policy). There are also several little kiosks for boat trips of varying duration. None of them exactly inpsire you with confidence. Single-family operations, and unlikely to offer great value for money.
The temperature really seemed to build up yesterday, but apparently it was still only 31 degrees max. It felt like 35 degrees to me.
I managed a quick hour in the gym, a nap, and then a quick swim. Nearly up to 50 metres without a pause! I also tried a sequence of two lengths (30 metres) followed by 90 seconds rest. Rinse and repeat. I'd hoped to get up to 5 sets, but after three I was out of breath. Some way to go to reach my end-of-holiday goal!
Dinner last night was at the famous Mr ItsyPakos. Lee played it safe and ordered chicken kebab. One of the waitresses at the Itsypakos establissement is marvellously unco-ordinated, meaning that she bumps into the customer when serving a dish or taking away an empty plate. I mean, every time.
Mr Itsypakos very kindly allowed us to choose our own food this time. This could be a great business model -- a restaurant where the customer chooses what to eat -- were it not for the fact that all other restaurants in the world have already adopted it. Craig and Amanda ordered Dolmades. Two minites later Mr Itsypakos returns to inform us that there is only one dolmades serving left. Craig says that he will order something else, at which point Mr Itsypakos said "Have the kleftiki!". I couldn't resist saying "You promised us that we could choose our own food tonight!"
My afelia was remarkably nice. It's just so puzzling that they can get the hard bit right, but fall down on so many of the ABCs of running a restaurant. Right the way to the end, when we asked for the bill and Mr Itsypakos asked us again what we orered, wrote it down and gave us a total of €83. That was actually about right. Craig gave him a €100 note and he gave him €20 change. Spot what's happened? He's just sidestepped VAT on the bill.
Thursday night I slept dreadfully, waking up at 1am and feeling incredibly hot. I was worried that I had caught the sun, and had to soak a tee shirt and lay it on my face. In despearation I opened the french windows, and that seemed to provide a bit of relief, even though the air-con was set at the same temperature as it was outside. I left the windows open and managed to get back to sleep, albeit with some oddly troubling dreams.
It transpired that the air-con must have failed at around 11pm (we'd had a flicker of a power failure in the restaurant) so perhaps Paphos suffered some of the Cyprus-wide power problems last night. The air-con was still making anoise, but wasn't actually cooling the air. That quickly pushed up the room temperature to about 28 degrees or thereabouts.
A quick word about Jamie, who so far this holiday has lost his mobile phone and slashed open the pad of the palm of his hand. Yesterday I reckon he spent another 10 hours in the sun without a hat. If I'd been him I'd either be suffering from sunstroke or be dead. But he seems remarkably stoic at these minor irritants. "Oh year, I put about half a gallon of after sun on me this evening", he said, while consuming some kind of Greek grilled sausage.
My own sun-experience has been the normal Birks over-carefulness. Although the "Sea & Ski" stuff that I brought with me is only SPF 30, the important part is the zinc stuff called UVA+UBN or whetever. In effect it stops the sun completely, rather than slowing the tanning process. So when I apply it properly, I come back as white as when I went out. On the plus side, I don't get sore. So far only my shoulders have got a bit pink and sore (swimmming about 12 lengths at 1pm), and part of my neck. Everywhere else a mixture of covering up, sea&ski, and the trust sun hat have done the job.
This morning we made the early-morning short bus trip to the Tombs of The Kings -- a necropolis some 2km outside Nea Paphos. It's a fascinating place, although hard to get over via photographs.
A view of the area, which would take about an hour to circumnavigate by foot. It obvioulsy used to be underwater, as much of the land is really beach.
Severeal of the tombs had more than one access point. Only one of these was restored to make access simple. Others were in their original condition and led through to smaller rooms through which one could glimps the main pillared room.
I think that you can see the lightouse in the background to give you some ide of how far north we were of the hotel.
Amanda, Craig, Pete.
One of the tombs.
Craig takes a bow in Tomb number 8.
A pomegranate.
A couple of hours there, though, even starting early in the morning, is quite enough to get me very hot. Good to get a bus back fairly promptly (very full of people travelling from the many apartments on this road to the tourist centre harbour some 3km to the south) and thence to a very welcome tepid shower -- at least three of these a day are necessary (plus a swim!) to keep the body temperature at a reasonable level.
On Thursday morning we went to see the Paphos mosaics, a World Heritage site that I suspect has brought Paphos a fair amount of cash from the EU. The difficult thing here is not to launch into a somewhat tedious entire history of Cyprus -- the nub of which appears to be "the Cypriots get it in the neck from whichever empire happens to be ruling the Mediterranean at the time". Nea Paphos as represented by these buildings covers roughly the 4th century BC to the 4th century AD. So even before it came to prominence under the Ptolemies and later the Romans, Cyprus had a long history of city statedoms. Nea Paphos won the prize in 4th cent BC because it was the closest to Alexandria.
The Heritage site houses two main buildings of interest, the villa of Theseus, a 10,000 square metre villa whose major mosaic depicts Theseus and the minotaur. The other major building is the House of Dionysus. Then there is the amphitheatre and the accompanying ruins of the local hospital, and, nearby, a Frankish castle built in the 12th century and destoyed by earthquake less than 20 years later.
So, even these 'old' buildings are probably built on a couple of layers of older homes. The stones were systematically re-used for later residences, but a fair amount of floor-plan remains.
We had a snack at one of the many portside cafés, which was quite pleasant. However the tourist shops are uniformly depressing, and probably the most reminiscent of 'the Torremolinos look'. A pile of tacky stuff probably made in the far east and all bought from the same wholesale importers-exporters. Worse, when you walk round, you are followed incredibly unsubtly (although I suspect that they think they are being subtle) by a store employee to check that you aren't shoplifting.
The portside also has a number of timeshare salesmen/women (I always fancy going up to one of them and asking them earnestly whether they have life insurance and then trying to sell them a policy). There are also several little kiosks for boat trips of varying duration. None of them exactly inpsire you with confidence. Single-family operations, and unlikely to offer great value for money.
The temperature really seemed to build up yesterday, but apparently it was still only 31 degrees max. It felt like 35 degrees to me.
I managed a quick hour in the gym, a nap, and then a quick swim. Nearly up to 50 metres without a pause! I also tried a sequence of two lengths (30 metres) followed by 90 seconds rest. Rinse and repeat. I'd hoped to get up to 5 sets, but after three I was out of breath. Some way to go to reach my end-of-holiday goal!
Dinner last night was at the famous Mr ItsyPakos. Lee played it safe and ordered chicken kebab. One of the waitresses at the Itsypakos establissement is marvellously unco-ordinated, meaning that she bumps into the customer when serving a dish or taking away an empty plate. I mean, every time.
Mr Itsypakos very kindly allowed us to choose our own food this time. This could be a great business model -- a restaurant where the customer chooses what to eat -- were it not for the fact that all other restaurants in the world have already adopted it. Craig and Amanda ordered Dolmades. Two minites later Mr Itsypakos returns to inform us that there is only one dolmades serving left. Craig says that he will order something else, at which point Mr Itsypakos said "Have the kleftiki!". I couldn't resist saying "You promised us that we could choose our own food tonight!"
My afelia was remarkably nice. It's just so puzzling that they can get the hard bit right, but fall down on so many of the ABCs of running a restaurant. Right the way to the end, when we asked for the bill and Mr Itsypakos asked us again what we orered, wrote it down and gave us a total of €83. That was actually about right. Craig gave him a €100 note and he gave him €20 change. Spot what's happened? He's just sidestepped VAT on the bill.
Thursday night I slept dreadfully, waking up at 1am and feeling incredibly hot. I was worried that I had caught the sun, and had to soak a tee shirt and lay it on my face. In despearation I opened the french windows, and that seemed to provide a bit of relief, even though the air-con was set at the same temperature as it was outside. I left the windows open and managed to get back to sleep, albeit with some oddly troubling dreams.
It transpired that the air-con must have failed at around 11pm (we'd had a flicker of a power failure in the restaurant) so perhaps Paphos suffered some of the Cyprus-wide power problems last night. The air-con was still making anoise, but wasn't actually cooling the air. That quickly pushed up the room temperature to about 28 degrees or thereabouts.
A quick word about Jamie, who so far this holiday has lost his mobile phone and slashed open the pad of the palm of his hand. Yesterday I reckon he spent another 10 hours in the sun without a hat. If I'd been him I'd either be suffering from sunstroke or be dead. But he seems remarkably stoic at these minor irritants. "Oh year, I put about half a gallon of after sun on me this evening", he said, while consuming some kind of Greek grilled sausage.
My own sun-experience has been the normal Birks over-carefulness. Although the "Sea & Ski" stuff that I brought with me is only SPF 30, the important part is the zinc stuff called UVA+UBN or whetever. In effect it stops the sun completely, rather than slowing the tanning process. So when I apply it properly, I come back as white as when I went out. On the plus side, I don't get sore. So far only my shoulders have got a bit pink and sore (swimmming about 12 lengths at 1pm), and part of my neck. Everywhere else a mixture of covering up, sea&ski, and the trust sun hat have done the job.
This morning we made the early-morning short bus trip to the Tombs of The Kings -- a necropolis some 2km outside Nea Paphos. It's a fascinating place, although hard to get over via photographs.
A view of the area, which would take about an hour to circumnavigate by foot. It obvioulsy used to be underwater, as much of the land is really beach.
Severeal of the tombs had more than one access point. Only one of these was restored to make access simple. Others were in their original condition and led through to smaller rooms through which one could glimps the main pillared room.
I think that you can see the lightouse in the background to give you some ide of how far north we were of the hotel.
Amanda, Craig, Pete.
One of the tombs.
Craig takes a bow in Tomb number 8.
A pomegranate.
A couple of hours there, though, even starting early in the morning, is quite enough to get me very hot. Good to get a bus back fairly promptly (very full of people travelling from the many apartments on this road to the tourist centre harbour some 3km to the south) and thence to a very welcome tepid shower -- at least three of these a day are necessary (plus a swim!) to keep the body temperature at a reasonable level.
