Our last full day in Cyprus, during our trip we have visited Roman and Greek sites so we thought we would finish off a little earlier with some neolithic villages.
At one site they made a big issue of the entrance which was offset to make it difficult for invaders, a feature not seen anywhere else in Cyprus or the Middle East they claim. It is exactly the same as the back entrance to Bury Ditches so perhaps someone from Shropshire, whilst on their holidays in Cyprus a few thousand years ago, showed them how to build a defensive entrance.
The sites were quite interesting, they seemed to have lived in round stone huts, some quite large and two storey, but very close together. In Africa the family build another hut right next door to their own when the children grow up so perhaps they did the same. The odd thing was they buried their dead under the floor of the hut, unless of course the archaeologists have stumbled on a neolithic murder and assumed this was the norm.
The huts at the top of the page are reconstructions, in practice they don't know if the roofs were flat or conical.
Tomorrow morning we get up at 6am and catch a morning flight to Stansted. We then have a long weekend in London before getting home on Sunday evening.
So what did we think of Cyprus?
I have talked a lot about the tensions between the Greeks and the Turks which is likely to get worse. Last night talking to our Romanian waitress in the Lebanese restaurant highlighted another issue. There are a great many Poles, Romanians and other Eastern Europeans working in Cyprus but many of the big spenders are Russians who have bought property in Cyprus to get money out of Russia. There is no love lost between the two factions, our Romanian friend seemed quite bitter.
We have had a very enjoyable two weeks, there has been plenty of things to occupy us, the food has been good (did I mention the raw steaks – we hopefully will have them again tonight as we are back in the same hotel) and the contrast between the snow in the mountains and the warmth in the towns along the coast has been good.
Having said that we would not rush back, what the appeal is to people who buy apartments here is beyond us. It is not particularly cheap, it is not as warm as the Canaries in winter and is a 4 hour flight from home but apart from the Russians most visitors are Brits and all the signs, menus etc are in English.
Several of the waiters seem unable to speak Greek which must upset the locals, the sign opposite is fairly typical, I better not say a good idea as Gill will divorce me!