Today, in order to give you all a good overview of Cyprus, we drove to Agia (Ayia) Napa which is the Magaluf of Cyprus but much much bigger. Most places were closed but we did find a bar which did Eggs Benedict for our breakfast. One surprise was that the beach was quite short so it must be incredibly crowded in summer unless most visitors spend all day in their bedrooms nursing their hangovers before hitting the bars again.
Before Agia Napa became holiday central all the package tourists flocked to Famagusta which is about 20 miles up the coast.
In August 1974 the Turkish tanks rolled in and since then it has been unoccupied. Unlike other parts of the Turkish controlled areas of Cyprus, Famagusta was fenced off by the Turkish Army immediately after being captured and remains fenced off today.
The Greek Cypriots who had fled were not allowed to return, and journalists are banned. All the houses, shops and hotels are empty and looted. I have not been able to find out why this area was treated differently, when the invasion took place only about a quarter of the population were Turkish Cypriots so perhaps the Turks thought they had even less of an excuse to invade.
We visited the Cultural Centre of Famagusta where they paint a picture of Famagusta as a paradise of happy people living together before 1974, I suspect if you were of Turkish origin you may have felt differently.
From the roof of the Centre you can look over the demilitarized zone (Gill pictured above) and see all the derelict hotels and flats, you can understand why the people who owned then are so annoyed. The local people have pinned all their hopes on the EU sorting it out as the UN have failed despite all sorts of resolutions but I don’t see anything being resolved in the current climate. It was a bit depressing.
To cheer ourselves up we visited yet another archaeological museum which had some excellent Roman glassware including the fish and the glass bottles pictured.
As reported yesterday we decided to be a little more adventurous with our food and tried a Lebanese restaurant as a change from Greek. It was so good we are going back tonight.