Tuesday 15th May

Yet another day of hard visiting.

After a basic breakfast we invested in day tickets for the local bus network & went down to the harbour bus station & then caught another to the 'Tombs of the Kings' archaeological site which covers about a square kilometre of tombs of varying sizes excavated & tunnelled into the limestone with multiple rooms. The fashion began in about 300 BC & was strongly influenced by Egyptian practises of the time as there were close links with Alexandria. In some ways it reminded us of tombs in Petra but these were far more complex complete with ossuaries to store the bones of the long dead, allowing the burial of more people. Access in each one is by a staircase & each tomb had a well as water was needed for funereal rites etc.

We found it quite tiring walking on the rough paths between the tombs & climbing in and out of them & were well pleased that we went fairly early, as advised, as it was warming up fairly fast.

Leaving this strange are we had the obligatory coffee to revive & returned to the harbour to visit the ruins of the old city which have only been partially excavated.

In Graeco Roman times Pafos was the capital of Cyprus for some time & the site of about 2 sq ks houses some of the finest mosaic floors that we have ever seen mainly from the 3rd & 4th Century AD in what must have been huge houses for officials & the rich. Here again we tramped though the site for about 2km before beating a retreat to the outside world at bout 1pm.

From there we went to find an old ruined Christian Basilica, Hrysopolitissa, in the town, not far away.

This was another extraordinary site with a little church set amongst the ruins of the giant basilica. By this time cultural interest was being displaced by fatigue, hunger & thirst, so after finding the pillar where St Paul was whipped, we retired to a café.

To ensure that we didn't waste our day passes we adopted standard Noyelle travel practise, chose a bus at random & took it out & back on a very devious but quite interesting route. As we are off back to Larnaca tomorrow we thought we needed to find the bus station again so by various means we eventually conquered the problem in preparation for our escape tomorrow. One of the biggest surprises was the number of Russian women with small children in prams. On one ride 4 prams were on the bus jostling to park their prams.

Had a passable meal & returned home to complete our preparations.