During the fourth week in November, there were rumblings that the Ministry of Education was going to shut all schools down on two successive Sundays, giving us two back-to-back 3-day weekends. The announcement was not made, I think, until the Tuesday before. There was a lot of back and forth about what to do with the lost days, how we'd make it up, etc. And on top of all that we had to reschedule parent-teacher conferences. It was a mess, with the director sending out a few hurried emails, not lacking grammatical mistakes and contradictions. (Much like many of my posts...) But it was generally sorted out, and we all knew we'd have our 3 day weekends, but we'd have to stay till 6:oopm and not arrive home till after 7:00. That's basically a 12 hour work day for us, which is definitely not fun, especially when you have to talk to parents about why their child needs to show up to more than 25% of the classes, and why only being able to speak 7 words of English will not help him get into first grade.
Despite all the confusion a plan was hatched by Steve and Kevin; Amsterdam for the weekend. Fly out Thursday night, back in Sunday night. Sounds simple enough, but tickets were running over 400, and I'd prefer to see the city when it's not being threatened by snow. The next possibility? Cyprus. Cyprus is a small island found just south of Turkey and SW of Greece. It is actually split by both countries, Greece influencing the south, and Turkey occupying the north. The south side is the more popular tourist destination, and is also part of the EU. The Turkish side is under protest and considered to be unjustifiably seized by Turkish forces by the EU and most other countries. The capital Nicosia is the only divided capital left in the world. Located a short 80 minute flight from Cairo for only about $240 round-trip, it was hard to pass up. We booked our tickets, and left straight from work that Thursday night.
We flew in to Larnaca on the South, rented a car, and then spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out how to start the thing. (Despite the fact that it was an automatic, it had to be put into neutral, turned off and turned back on to get it running. It had been a pretty long day at work...) We drove less than an hour to the seaside town of Ayia Napa, checked into our sea view rooms and walked around the grounds. Even at night it was easy to see just how blue and clear the water was. The light from the beach seemed to make the white sand glow through the sea.
The next morning, we gorged ourselves on bacon and any other pork products we could find at the buffet as we sat under the trellises, about 50m from the Mediterranean and then set out on a walk through town. A lot of our time was spent watching The Greg Johnson trying on cheap sunglasses from touristy shops, and a never-ending quest for the ultimate cheesy Cyprus t-shirt. We explored the whole town, stumbling upon a cool little Irish pub and an old Greek Orthodox monastery, finishing with some burgers at a trendy restaurant just outside of the town square. Later that night we went out to some bar that kind of felt like we were on spring break in college, but without many people. At the bar we did witness a Swedish guy get pepper sprayed in the face for not wanting to pay for the two beers we all saw him drink. "I'd like a small beer at a fair price."
Saturday we headed towards the west side hoping to hit some historical sites throughout the day. Despite the fact that we never made it to our intended target of Pafos on the west coast, we saw some pretty amazing things and I didn't get into an accident despite being in a country that drives British-style. Our first stop was Choirokoitia, a neolithic site dating back to about 7000bc. It is an interesting site on a hillside, composed of round purpose-built structures and evidence of some of the earliest fresh-water wells and feline domestication. After Choirokoitia, we found
Kourion, a Greek/Roman site dating back almost 2000 years ago that was destroyed by earthquakes around the 4th or 5th centuries. Kourion was the first 'classical' site I'd ever been to, and it was amazing. Sitting on top of a cliff overlooking the water, with steam baths, a basilica, amphitheater, and gladiator house, all housing intricate mosaics, Kourion impressed me greatly. We probably spent a few hours walking around everything, taking pictures and eventually watching the sunset over the sea from the largest of the baths. Not only did the construction impress me, but so did the amount of archaeology that must have gone into documenting this site. The basilica had gone through phases of being a bath house, house of worship, and a housing a strange pyramid-shaped building (which is still not understood) until it was destroyed by an invasion and the earthquakes. Uncovering all the occupations took a lot of work, and an impressive amount of knowledge.
After our exhaustive day of sightseeing, we attempted to find a rumored Taco Bell in the nearby town, and ended up at Bennigans. So much for eating locally, but after a long day, it was pretty much all we could find with easy access to parking.
Our final day, we drove around the south and eastern sides of the island, stopping to check out the Cavo Gkreko, sea caves and doing some cliff diving in a beautiful spot. We never could find our way to the Turkish side, but I'll save that for another day. Our last meal in Cyprus was at a small local place near the airport that we stumbled upon (after getting kind of lost) and we all dined on some delicious gyros before calling it a day.
The trip was extremely spur of the moment, but I couldn't have asked for a better way to spend Thanksgiving away from home, being fairly close to my maternal family's homeland.