Walking into the Crown Resort Hotel was a glimpse of Christmas future - in the old folks home! The median age of the guests must have been 60+ and to see them asleep in their comfy chairs brought back memories of visits to the Veterans home. Entertainment continued the theme - Bingo at 21:30 every night, and a series of organised activities so our muscles and brains didn't atrophy. Anyway, the inmates were all friendly enough. It turns out that this time of year the deals are so good (cheap flights, 33%-50% discounts on the hotel, etc) that it is cheaper than paying for 'the electric' and food at home! Especially as the deals are often "All Inclusive" as ours was. Btw, not quite all inclusive, but near enough.
Some of the decor must have raised eyebrows - we assume classical themes are being alluded to.
We had arrived with a view of lightning from the plane so new there had been some bad weather, but the next morning was fine as you can see above - and a good 10 deg warmer than Leeds!
Sadly the pattern was to be half a day of sunshine and the other half rain, and we never knew which half would be what.
We stayed in Coral Bay, west of Paphos which itself is on the south-west end of the island. The latter was an ancient capital under a Ptolemaic governor. There are still Ptolemaic, Hellenistic and Roman ruins, as well as a few later mediaeval buildings. Arabs, Franks, Venetians, Turks - you name it, they'd all come through at one stage or another.
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| A small fort protecting Paphos harbour. Venetian then Turkish. |
Here's a taster but I think I will link you to the rest. There's also an amphitheatre, agora, villas, and a later Frankish (ie crusader) castle. Apparently many of the stones from this were shipped of to help line the Suez canal which is kind of poetic since the granite columns in the agora, for instance, came from Egypt originally.
Wow! the excitement of blogging has exhausted me. I'll post part two tomorrow.
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