Limassol; Thursday, 25 January, 2024

After a decent nights sleep, and a filling breakfast, I headed out of the hotel via its entrance down onto the beach and started a long wander into the centre of town along the seafront. It’s just over 5Km from the hotel to the centre of town, so it was a pretty lengthy walk, especially as quite a bit of the early part is along the sands of the beach – though at least this part was relatively deserted.

By the time I reached close to the centre of town the beachfront path was very busy with walkers, joggers, dog walkers, cyclists and more. Thankfully at the point it was getting busiest Google maps alerted me that I needed to cross over the road and head away from the coast for my first stop of the morning at the Archaeological museum for the district.

The museum has a very large number of artefacts, both on display in the museum itself and in the monuments store yard down the side of the museum. The majority coming from the two main archaeological sites close to Limassol – the ancient cities of Kourion, 14Km to the West and Amathous, 10Km to the East of modern day Limassol.

I spent quite a bit of time looking round the museum before continuing on my walk heading back down to the seafront and following it all the way into the old port, and sitting a little way behind it the medieval museum housed in the old Limassol Castle.

The Castle was originally built on the remains of a church during the Venetian rule of the city and was damaged and repaired during the Ottoman take over. During British rule the castle served as a prison before being turned into the regional archaeological museum. When that moved into its current home the castle’s exhibition was changed to look at life in medieval times, with exhibits spaced out across four floors from the basement up. Out on the roof I was able to take in the views over the city and over to the Troodos mountains.

By the time I’d descended back down to ground level I was feeling quite peckish so I headed over to a nearby restaurant for a spot of lunch before continuing a walk through the old town of Limassol – though there isn’t much of it left. The city is the second largest and most important of the Cypriot Republic and consequently a lot of new buildings are both in place and springing up. I did managed to stumble across the Orthodox cathedral of Agia Napa, but that was closed for the afternoon.

With pretty much all of historic Limassol seen I headed back down to the main coast road and, rather than walking back to the hotel, cheated and hopped on the regular buses that run along the route.

Back at the hotel I changed into my swimming trunks and headed down to the hotels beach, initially with the idea of going for a swim, though as soon as the waters hit my toes I immediately downgraded that to a slightly chilly paddle. After a few minutes paddling I headed back up into the hotel to dry off on one of the sunbeds that surround the, at the time of visiting empty outdoor pool.

With the sun starting to set I headed indoors and down into the hotel spa to pay a visit to the hotels heated indoor pool for a quick swim in there, which was at a much more pleasant temperature than the Eastern Mediterranean in late January.

After swimming I headed back up to my room to shower and get changed and then it was time to head down to another dinner, a quick nightcap in the bar and then an early night as I needed to be up early the following morning.