Kate Goes to Cyprus: Ayia Napa

It's been a long time since I've updated my blog. It's hard for me to find things to write about when I'm just living day-to-day life and not traveling. But hopefully you all will find things interesting either way! I'm on my third week of classes and enjoying it. It's still an adjustment to take classes in a foreign country....perspectives are obviously vastly different in many ways.

So this weekend we went to Ayia Napa, which is supposed to be the nicest beach town on the island. It was gorgeous and a really great place. The weather was a little cool, which was actually nice because the heat in Cyprus sometimes seems never ending! The bus ride to Ayia Napa is about an hour, but we took a few detours. We stopped at a Byzantine church and Famagusta. Famagusta is a ghost town. When the Turks invaded Cyprus in 1974, all the people of this town were forced to leave. It was a very happy town and was running well. It also attracted many tourists. Sadly, the people have never been able to go back and have to look at it everyday from their new homes. It's a sore subject for them. It was really sad to hear about it. But it's always interesting to learn more and more about the history of this island.

View of Famagusta

We arrived in Ayia Napa in the late afternoon on Friday. Wow, it was gorgeous. We stayed in a beach resort hotel with an amazing pool, that was right on the beach. That night we went out for karaoke! It was a lot of fun and the other tourists and locals enjoyed watching us. Surprisingly, they are not used to Americans coming to Ayia Napa. Most of the tourists are British. That seems to be the way most of Cyprus is though. Saturday we spent all day at the beach. It was great. I also rented a four wheeler with my friend and we drove around the town. We got to see some great views of the sea and the rest of the town. That was definitely my favorite part of our trip. That night we went out for seafood meze with our entire group of 20-some people. The next day we left and came back to a much cooler Cyprus, yay!