Larnaca; Friday, 14 March, 2025

Sleep was relatively important as I had to be up very early this morning to get breakfast as soon as the restaurant opened as the tour I was booked on was scheduled to pick me up at 07:10 (though in the end it was gone 07:30 by the time the coach finally arrived.) I’d originally booked a tour that picked up closer to 9, but the English language tour had been undersubscribed so the tour company collapsed the group into the earlier Polish tour which meant an early pick-up and most of the guiding being conducted in Polish, but it did mean the entrance fees to the sites along the way were included rather than being extras.

After pickups along the coast, through Ayia Napa and up the southeast corner of the island we turned inland and made our way to the first and possibly most important stop of the morning, the border crossing to leave both the Republic of Cyprus and the European Union and enter the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. The result of the 1974 war that left Cyprus split into two countries, albeit one of them only recognised by Türkiye. The border crossing took about 20 minutes to complete with passports and ID cards from everyone on the coach being collected and checked by the Cypriot border before driving the short distance to the Turkish Cypriot border and the process repeated again.

With everyone cleared to enter the country we continued on our tour heading north to the ancient settlement of Salamis on the Eastern coast of the island. Salamis was at one point it’s own city-state and today is home to some stunning remains including the lower part of the amphitheatre, which would once have been at least twice as high, and the remains of the Gymnasium. There’s also ruins of a much newer Roman era bath house. We spent about an hour exploring the site, albeit with only a 5 minute English language briefing before it was back onto the bus.

The second stop of the tour was the former beach resort of Varosha. Up until the war in 1974 this was one of the premier beach resorts in Europe with large numbers of beach front hotels and really good tourist infrastructure. The bulk of the investment in the town had been from Greek Cypriots who demanded that the town should be in the Greek area of control, but the borders of the war put it within the boundaries of Famagusta which was under Turkish Cypriot control. In the end with neither side budging the UN stepped in and Varosha became part of the buffer zone and as such is frozen in time in August 1974, complete with new hotels partially completed and now rusting cranes towering over them.

The whole site is a ghost town, but since 2017 it’s been possible to enter the town and wander around certain streets – though given the buildings haven’t been maintained for over 50 years it’s strictly forbidden to go into any of the buildings, and probably wisest to keep towards the middle of the streets, just in case. We spent a good amount of time wandering around the site before it was time to return to the bus and the short hop up the road to the centre of the old town of Famagusta.

The old town is completely surrounded by it’s original Venetian walls and battlements and we had nearly two hours here to explore including taking in the former cathedral of St Nicholas which was converted by the Ottomans into a mosque and wander around the many narrow lanes and roads of the old town, as well as heading up onto the walls to take in the views other both the modern city and the old town.

From Famagusta it was back onto the bus for the drive back to the border crossing and to repeat the whole exit/entry process again. By the time I was finally dropped off at the hotel it was nearly 4pm so I had a quick shower to freshen up and then headed out along the seafront to a small taverna that I’d spotted on my first night for a quick very late lunch, before going for a paddle on the beach and then back to the hotel just to relax, take in the sunset and have a well-earned early nights sleep.