My vacation in Cyprus/Malta

[Scruffydog777]

I'm on vacation in Cyprus. I'm going to Malta tomorrow because a friend from work was born in the U.K and he's been there and says it's a very nice place to visit. I usually like to visit at least 2 different places and I made kind of a last minute decision to go to Cyprus, which I went to first without having done much research on the trip and I think at this point, Cyprus will be the highlight of my trip.

One place I visited was the Greco-Roman theater in Curium which was first built in 200 BC, then changed by the Romans. It was damaged by earthquakes and other things over the years but has since been rebuilt.

This theater is fairly similar to the one in Taormina where Alizee performed Moi Lolita.


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Another place I visited was a site not to far away appropriately which was where the Greek goddess Aphrodite,was born in these waters. Here's the story behind it.

Petra Tou Romiou or Aphrodite's Rock. is a part of the lower body of Uranus. This legend says that Cronus ambushed his father and cut him below the waist with a scythe. Uranus, as he tried to escape flying, lost parts of his truncated body and testicles into the sea. A white foam appeared from which a maiden arose, the waves first taking her to Kythera and then bringing her to Cyprus. The maiden, named Aphrodite, went to the assembly of gods from Cyprus. The Romans widely referred to her as Venus."

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Another place I visited was a mosque on a salt lake on the outskirts of Larnaka. When the Muslims came here an aunt of Muhamad died and a mosque was built on the spot. It is now considered one of the top 5 important places in the Muslim religion.


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Another place I visited in Larnaca is the church of St Lazarus. In Christian history, Lazarus was a very good friend of Jesus. Lazarus died a few days before Jesus was to die and he is the only person to be brought back from the dead by Jesus. After the death of Jesus, he had to move to Cyprus and to what is now known as Larnaca and became a bishop there. He lived for 30 more years. He was buried in a tomb there. In the many years that followed, Cyprus changed hands several times. At one point, the remains of Lazarus were brought to Constantinople.

A church was built over St Lazarus's tomb. In 1970 there was a fire in the church. In the repair work that followed, it was found there were still some remains of Lazarus in his sarcophagus, so it to has become a famous place in the Christian religion.

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[CleverCowboy]

WOW! What great photos and history!

When I saw the inside pictures of the Church of St. Lazarus, being that Cyprus is situated near Greece and Turkey, it must have been a Greek Orthodox Church. I looked it up and found that it was. Very elaborate.

What is the predominant language there? Having any communication problems or are there plenty of English speaking people there?

[Scruffydog777]

Originally Posted by CleverCowboy

WOW! What great photos and history!

When I saw the inside pictures of the Church of St. Lazarus, being that Cyprus is situated near Greece and Turkey, it must have been a Greek Orthodox Church. I looked it up and found that it was. Very elaborate.

What is the predominant language there? Having any communication problems or are there plenty of English speaking people there?

It seems many of the locals speak English. I found out years ago, English is a required language in Turkey. Here from what my tour guide told me, it's not required, but many people take English classes, but I do find the English people speak here, is difficult to understand with their accent.

[eru777]

Nice travelogue Scruffy, love the pictures. It's interesting to see how the same place can lend itself to different religions. I didn't even know there was a church for saint Lazarus.

[Scruffydog777]

Originally Posted by eru777

Nice travelogue Scruffy, love the pictures. It's interesting to see how the same place can lend itself to different religions. I didn't even know there was a church for saint Lazarus.

I didn't know either until I got here. Here's some info on it from Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_...zarus,_Larnaca

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Yesterday, I went up to Nicosia the capitol of Cyprus. In 1974, there was a war here between the Turkish Cypriots in the north backed by the Turkish government and the Greek Cypriots in the south backed by the Greek government. A truce was reached, but the country remains divided in 2, including Nicosia. I wanted to see the border area, so I headed north and found at 2 different points, armed soldiers. A little further on I saw a sign that said "NO PICTURES", so I decided it was best to head back down town.



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[CleverCowboy]

This reminds me of the 38th parallel between North and South Korea in mini-form. The soldiers guard the border day and night, and nothing ever happens. They must be bored out of their minds.

[Scruffydog777]

I went on a tour today of the 'three cities' of Malta. These are three small cities that would barely consitute a section of a city today and they are just across the harbor from Valetta.

One place we stopped at there was 2 buildings called 'auberge de France' which were housings for the French knights back in the 16t century.
Well that's neither here nor there as far as the purpose of this post, but it's related in that it's of a French nature.

But the main story here is there were about 9 people in our tour group and we had one tour guide named Celine. Six of the group spoke French and 3 English. Celine spoke both languges. So when I got a chance, I asked her if she was from France. She said no, that she spent her first 10 years in Ontario, then she moved to several other places, but none of them France.
Later on, I asked her if she listens to any French music, she said yes and I asked her if she was familiar with Mylene Farmer and she said yes. I said I liked the music of her protege and she took the bait and asked me who that was and I said Alizee. She said she had heard of her and then she went on to say that one day a Scottish male friend of hers came up to her all excited and said you have to listen to this singer and it was Alizee. She couldn't remember the name of the song though.

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