Turkey and Cyprus

Christmas day Dec 25^th 2012  Alanya Turkey

It was a beautiful day – 18 degrees C – blue skies and not windy.   The town was picture perfect.  I went on a city highlights tour and was disappointed.  We stayed far too long at places and it was a little boring.  We visited a medieval citadel, the red tower, the Damlatas Cave.  When I got back to the ship I took a nap and watched the Pope’s Christmas Eve Mass on TV.  The captain of the ship found Santa and escorted him onboard J  He gave presents to the kids on the ship.  I went to the dining room for dinner and there weren’t a lot of people there so they seated me alone L  I did have a nice turkey dinner with cranberry sauce. 

Dec 26^th 2012 Limmasol, Cyprus

It was another gorgeous day.  Cyprus is not very pretty.  It is very dry with hardly any rain and there is wire fencing everywhere.  I went on a Byzantine Heritage trip in the Troodos Mountains.  The first thing I noticed when I got off the bus was the heavenly smell of pine trees!  We visited the Church of St. Nicholas of the Roof.  It is called that because its dome is covered by another protective sloping room.  The frescoes in the church span 600 years.   The churches are Greek Orthodox here and the guide explained some of the frescoes.  Many depicted Jesus stories everyone is familiar with.  There was one painting with Mary breastfeeding Jesus which is unusual.  We also went to the Church of Panagia Forviotissa at Asinou – it had wonderful frescoes too.  There was a scene in both churches that is common to Orthodox churches – Jesus at the resurrection pulling Adam and Eve out of Hell and lifting them to paradise with Solomon and David.  Weird.  Not sure how I feel about that or how Biblical that is. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside either church so I don’t have pictures of them. We visited village of Kakapetria and had a typical Cyprus lunch – kabobs, hummus, potatoes etc.   I got to stroll through some wonderful winding alleys in the village – postcard pretty J

Interesting things I learned.  It is very much like Greece – they speak Greek and the food is similar.  Cyprus was occupied by the Brits until 1960.  They still have two military bases on the island.  India was also a British territory and there is a lot of English influence etc.  Weirdly, I didn’t see the same influence in Cyprus. 

Cyprus comes from the word “copper” which Cyprus is famous for.  We passed an asbestos mine which is obviously closed J They are famous for the carob plant – they make a lot of things with carob syrup.  This is apparently where the measuring of gold in carats came from.  Each seed in the carob is the same weight so they used it to weigh things – 4 seeds equals a carat.  In 1974 the Turks invaded the northern part of Cyprus and are still there.  The UN etc does not recognize this as a country even though they call themselves the blah blah blah of Turkey  (I can’t remember exactly ) The demarcation line goes through the capital city of Cyprus.

It was a very peaceful day and tomorrow we are going to Israel.