Larnaca; Monday, 17 March, 2025

My final morning, and it looked like a fair number of the athletes had already headed home as breakfast was relatively quiet when I finally made it down just after 9am. I had a quick breakfast then headed back up to my room to pack, checkout and then head back into Larnaca.

I caught the bus back round to the St Lazarus church and this time there weren’t any services going on so I was able to have a look around inside this stunning church. The church is named after St Lazarus – the man who Jesus brough back from the dead – and whose second and final resting place is in a tomb below the church.

From the church I wandered over to the beach and fort to take in some more views of the castle before wandering back up the beach to the centre of town and then on over to the north of the city and the main archaeological site of Kition.

Kition was the settlement originally built in this location more than 3,000 years ago across the city any construction work almost immediately hits archaeology. At this northern part several temples of the city have been unearthed and left open to visit to give just a taste of what the city would have looked like, up until the temples were destroyed around 325BCE by Alexander the Great.

From Kition I wandered back down into the centre of town and all the way back to the St Lazarus Church as I’d spotted a nice looking restaurant there earlier and decided that was probably as good a place as any to have my final Cypriot meal in.

After a very nice lunch I wandered back to the bus stop and took the bus back to the hotel to collect my luggage and wait for the shared shuttle back to the airport. Though it was clear when a taxi arrived that nobody else from this part of the city needed the shared shuttle as once again I had a taxi to myself all the way back to the airport.

15 minutes later I was already checked in, my bag in the system and making my way through security and through to the lounge. Due to air traffic control restrictions we were a few minutes late departing but, despite some pretty bumpy points over the alps, we made up all that time and finally arrived at the gate at Heathrow 10 minutes early.