#77 Looking for tombs in Paphos

The weather has calmed down, no travels for a while, and life can slow down just a little. I say slowed down but it wouldn’t be me if it wasn’t another random accident.

This year I’ve had a few of those.

The first bigger one was when I didn’t have the weights I needed for an exercise so I improvised with a bar instead of dumbbells and accidentally went too far backwards and almost, kind of popped my shoulder/arm (it popped right back in).

Coincidentally, I was already going to an osteopath for something else entirely and she checked me out (nothing major, just needed time to heal and annoyingly reduced some of my ability to move my arm behind my back). But pretty much okay now.

Then, in Italy the other week I was so excited to find a great shaded seating spot for us (before our gelato melts in the 30-degree heat) that I didn’t see one of the benches right in front of me and bashed my right shin against it, resulting in a big, achy red bump that turned into a dark bruise across my leg. Ouch.

(I also managed to be the only person to fall getting out of a kayak on a quite steep, rocky beach but we don’t talk about that)

And then earlier this week, I managed to hit my ribs and the tissue around them so hard in the gym that I ended up with some internal bruising (I think?). It’s hurting quite a bit so am taking it easy. But as we already know, you can’t take me anywhere—I’ll find a way to hurt myself one way or another.

So given I’m home now for a while, I wanted to finish up my photographs from our trip to Cyprus. It was an incredibly fast, rushed trip. We only had one mission: attend our friend’s wedding, so not a proper holiday.

Our itinerary was as follows:

• 25th April — 7am flight, land at 2pm local time 😴

• 26th April — wedding all day, getting picked up around 12pm and celebrating until midnight 💃

• 27th April — 6am flight 😴

The flight was over 4 hours (I was getting so restless!), and the whole trip was like you blink and you’re back.

But it was the first time I have ever been this far, which was exciting, but of course I would’ve loved to spend an actual full day of exploring at the very least!

Unfortunately, the only time I had for wandering around Paphos—a coastal city on the very west corner of this Mediterranean island—was on the day we arrived (when my other half went for a well-deserved nap after not sleeping all night) and a couple hours before we got picked up by the wedding bus the next day.

So, what can you do with just a handful of hours?

We were lucky our hotel was just a short walk away from Archaeological Site of the Tombs of the Kings and it was open early in the morning, so that was our one cultural activities picked. ✅

We also made sure to have at least one local meal out—a nice meze of course, literally on the side of a road with a bunch of cats waiting for you to drop some leftovers on the floor. (there were LOTS of cats!)

Looking at these photos again, I’m really regretting not having more time in Cyprus. Maybe another time as an actual holiday trip.

I’m always quite fascinated with that part of the world, and Cyprus has lots of historical and cultural intersections that I’d love to learn more about (and see in person).

After we checked in, I had just enough energy left to go for a wander down to the beach and get some fresher sea air. As I was taking some photos, a local man approached me (a friendly one!) and we got chatting about Cyprus, its people and tourists.

Cyprus has a pretty strong divide between the Greek part (where I was) and the Turkish part (more in the north). His mum is Greek and dad—Turkish.

He told me how Russian tourists used to represent the majority of travellers who arrived here (or at least in the nearby hotel that he was talking about), but since Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, Cyprus had since banned commercial flights from Russia heavily impacting the numbers.

Interestingly, according to my new Cypriot friend, Israel tourists have since replaced all those empty hotel rooms previously booked by Russian visitors.

I don’t know if Cyprus would fit my idea of a perfect holiday destination, but what appealed to me was the barren-ness of it. The empty, quiet roads, old cars, fields of seemingly never-ending dry grass. Snippets of different cultures, even remnants of the British rule. Everything felt quite rough around the edges, but also so enticing to explore.

But as you walk into the more residential areas, everything feels more homely, cosy, warm, with neat front gardens, plant pots, and cats sunbathing everywhere.

Even if some of the buildings are hardly keeping it together and on the brink of collapse, there’s still something so curious about them. It’s probably just grass being greener on the other side, but I don’t feel the same type of curiosity about dilapidated buildings here in the UK.

I think the weather and the ambiance plays a big role.

I can confidently say we didn’t have time to visit any popular tourist hotspots, we didn’t have time to hire a car and drive around to see those beautiful turquoise water-filled views you see on Google, but at least we saw a small piece of history in the short time we had.

The Tombs of the Kings site was actually quite fun to explore, we had an audio guide (I think they had an app?), so it was almost like a gamified experience trying to find the correct spot next (the signage wasn’t all that good).

I suppose cats are somewhat part of Cypriot culture? Someone even wrote this blog article, titled “How Cyprus became the island of cats.” So here’s a small dose of cats we found in Paphos:

… and that’s my cat spam over. I think so far—out of the places we’ve been—Romania comes close with how many cats you can find. 🐈

Have you been to Cyprus? Would love to hear your experiences given all I had was pretty much a 24-hour speed run through such a small part of it.

That’s all from me this week—if you enjoyed this newsletter issue and haven’t subscribed yet, you can click the button below. I’d love to have you here! Hopefully, catch you next week.✨