Planned Route For A Cyprus Round Trip: driving, eating, drinking, hiking, sightseeing, swimming, walking (June 2022)

 Cyprus map

Ryan Air

Start with booking flights to Cyprus. RyanAir is cheap, cheaper if you book early, expensive if you have to go the day before. A couple on our flight had to take different flights when their son was offered the chance to take an O level at school a year early so mother and one of the two children had to go a day later. The mother and exam taking son's flights were a different day and much dearer than the father's and daughter's flights a day earlier and booked earlier.

Our flight out to Cyprus was full, half booked by people going to a wedding. Cyprus holds a lot of weddings for people from the UK and Israel.

Seating and food

Pafos Hotel

Hotel: Casa Mespilea

Behind the front building is a courtyard with hotel bedrooms around it on the ground floor. In the morning you step out to the aroma of growing herbs. The buffet is along the wall of the main buildings. Choose a table under the trees. The buffet included dark bread wrapped around white cream cheese.

After eating, walk around admiring the trees and flowers. The sun casts shadows.

Upstairs on the terrace, used for events, is a view of the distant sea. Alternatively. cross the road for a clifftop view and caffe, a statue with its back to the sea, and Caffe Nero which enjoys the view.

Pafos Seafront

Tombs of the kings

Archaeology floor mosaics

Shipwreck, banana plantation, wineries

Limasol (southern seaport city)

Hotel Eins - noisy on a Friday night. Insects. Cannot park outside to unload suitcases and load up.

Restaurant Meze

Wine Museum

Excellent

Mountain Village Lifou

Agro Vino hotel

Delightful

Greek Orthdox -Cypriot  church

Nicosia (capital) (see previous post)

Hotel

Cyprus Museum

Allow at least an hour. Make sure to see the room of gravestones and translated

inscriptions.

Observatory - on the Greek side.

Great to see the layout of both sides of the old city.

Classic Motorcycle museum. 

Turkish occupied side

Great Inn (Buyuk Han), a courtyard where you sit in the open air. We had lunch there. Very pleasant. 

The attendant guarding the entrance to the communal toilet makes a small charge. So keep some change for yourself and your companions.

Larnaka 

Hotel Indigo

Plain facade but luxurious inside. Great menu. Expensive. My husband's favourite hotel.

George's Villa guesthouse

A farmhouse in fields just off the motorway. Dogs, cats, ducks, birds, delightful hosts, chatty, cheerful George and his smiling Vietnamese wife Hana. She makes breakfast for 5 Euros per person and brings it up on a tray, beaming as if you are doing her a favour. 

Up an outside staircase. George and Hana help you up with your luggage. Insect netting on windows. Big spa bath. Shower with loads of buttons. Loads of wall sockets, cupboards, hangers and fully equipped kitchenette and big glass top desk with a map of the world. 

George drives ahead of you to point out the best local restaurant along the off the motorway strip. 

When we left, he said, "I wish I  could have talked to you longer." 

We felt the same.

Useful Websites

Casa Mespilea, Paphos

www.casamespilea.com

A second day of sweet surprises at joyful George's Villa Near Dali in Cyprus

Angela Lansbury and George admiring grapes at George's Villa in Cyprus. Photo by Trevor Sharot.

George's Villa Big Breakfast 

I and my husband started out day sharing the spa bath in the large red-walled bathroom beside our spacious bedroom. I managed to get a decent photo, decent in the sense of showing no private parts, by crossing my legs and folding my arms.

We dressed quickly, ready for the owner's wife Hana, to arrive with our breakfast, costing five euros per person, on a wicker tray. We had white bread, cheese, slices of processed meat, two bananas. The room already had apples and oranges. Pecan nuts. She brought some spreads. And Hawaiian juice. Boiled eggs. Fried halloumi cheese - very tasty. 

Tea Time at George's Villa

When we returned from the Greek side of the divided capital, Nicosia, at tea time, it started to rain. The car park beside the guest house wall is open air. But Hana came rushing out, all smiles, carrying two umbrellas. 

She asked, "Would you like honey for tea?" By the time we reached the top of the outside staircase and the bedroom door, she was already there with the honey. She filled the kettle with water and took out two cups for us and the tea bags and Nescafe.

The motorway is less than five minutes away. We reached Nicosia in an hour. 

If you want to cross into the Turkish side, remember your passports, which will be checked four times, by the Greeks as you leave, as you enter the Turkish side, returning from Turkey into the short walk along the suburban road which is now no man's land, and back through the Greek side.. I had already done that earlier in the week with my walking group. On this day trip we heard the Greek point of view at the Observation Tower.

Fond Farewell

On the morning when we left, both George and Hana helped us out to the car with our suitcases and packages. Charming George's last words to my husband were a positive remark, a compliment to me and my husband, "Look after this treasure!"

George's Villa Joys - A Cypriot Surprise of Solar Panels And Sweetness

 We stayed in several amazing hotels in Cyprus but George's Villa was an unending pleasure and a non-stop surprise. His email message on the morning of our arrival was reassuring. George is, if not eccentric, at least an individualist. He has a huge number of solar panels, putting power on and off the grid, and chickens to provide breakfast eggs.

We had expected it to be good because it had rating of over nine out of ten on booking.com. We were a little apprehensive when we turned off the motorway, though narrow lanes across a field, under graffiti-covered pillars of the motorway, twisting turns around more fields, along a narrower and narrower road, past a derelict building, up to the a remote wall with barbed wire on top and a high gate.

However, it was a relief when the gate swung open and a beaming little man raced forward to greet us. Followed by his two dogs and several cute cats. How many cats?

They have about twenty cats - 'I've lost count!' grins George. Two docile dogs. 

We parked beside his solar panels. At my husband's request, George gave us a guided tour of the panels and told us how they work and how he sometimes takes power from the national grid and sometimes passes power back to the grid.

A cage of ducklings. Swallows' nests. Arbors of grapes. 

The bedroom was up an outside wooden staircase. He helped us carry up our suitcases. His Vietnamese wife, Hana, came running to help us.

Beautiful Bedroom

Bedroom in George's Villa. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

The big bedroom has a big bed. More than twenty three pin sockets. Two phone adapter slots. A Tiffany style bedside lamp. Loads of hangers.  34 handles to drawers or cupboards to wardrobes. 

The kitchenette area with full size, double door, working cold fridge. 

The large glass top desk, big enough for two of us, had a black world map on the top (actually stuck on the underside where it cannot get damaged and showing through the glass).

Best Bathroom

Angela Lansbury in the bathroom beside the spa bath in George's Villa. Photo by Trevor Sharot.

When using the  Jacuzzi bath allow fifteen or twenty minutes to fill it. You must cover the outlets with water. The top jets send water arching up, so you should fill the bath with water higher than the water jet.

A glass of fresh orange juice was presented to us on arrival. 

Hana (think of Hannah) brings a breakfast tray at only 5 euros per person extra, well worth it, for the food and fun. The room had a toaster. Anything missing - butter. No coffee maker, but a kettle and Nescafe. I should have saved the coffee capsules from our one expensive night, the expensive luxurious hotel Indigo in Larnaka, three times the price of George's, and decanted the coffee grounds.

Hana is a nurturer. She is quick to understand complicated questions when you ask and point. 

Surprises? Search for the toilet control behind you to flush the toilet and you will set off the single water jet in your behind. 

Shower

The shower has six working body level light sprays, activated when you turn one of the knobs. (Another knob is on off for the water shower from the hand held shower fixed on a slider. 

I didn't find out what operated the overhead shower. Three kinds of shower in one shower is one up on the two in the other hotels we visited. I read on Tripadvisor that the radio controls worked a few years back. I did not get them working but didn't spend time trying them out.

Noise and Windows

The noise from the motorway is heard on the terrace, but cannot be heard in the bedroom when the shutters are shut.

Insect Netting

The windows are shielded from insects with metal netting - another thoughtful touch missing from every other hotel we had visited.

We though George's villa was a bargain. (In the photo of me beside the spa bath, I am wearing another bargain, a butterfly pattern top bought in Nicosia for three euros. See me in more clothes on my other blog dressofthedayangela.cblogspot.com)

If you google George's Villa you will find that there are several George's Villas around the world. The one which I visited and recommend is the one in Perakhorio, Cyprus.

Useful Websites

booking.com

https://www.booking.com/hotel/cy/george-39-s-villa-perakhorio.en-gb.html

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotel_Review-g190383-d11788132-Reviews-George_s_Villa-Nicosia_Nicosia_District.html