American in Cyprus: July 18

Today is July 18th, 2012 and today's guest blog is written by Andrew Fauble. I have already done a blog on this vacation, but I guess they prefer one that doesn’t involve my amazing escape when I first got to the island. Anyway, I will be writing about the events that took place today. We left the village at around 10:20 in the morning, only twenty minutes past our desired departure time of 10:00. We started the drive by going through several small villages just like Salamiou. The curvy mountain roads led us to our first destination, a high medieval period bridge that passed over one of the few places of running river water right now in Cyprus. It was a refreshing sight to see something like that again. We continued driving for a long time past amazing views of the mountains and continued winding roads. We traveled up, down, and all around the Troodos Mountains until we reached the much anticipated monastery. It looked like a large building from the outside and the entrance was covered with mosaics of some of the most famous people from the Bible. The inside was incredible to say the least. It was a very large complex with rooms and corridors in every direction. There was not a wall that wasn’t covered in mosaics and paintings of every possible bible story, character, or saint. A church was also located inside that was truly beautiful. Connected to it was a room that contained all sorts of bones from famous religions leaders, saints, and even John the Baptist. Unfortunately, the church was the only place pictures were not allowed, so I couldn’t capture this amazing sight. Personally the monastery was my favorite place we visited on the island. The artwork was beyond words I could use to describe it. My camera took a picture of as many of the murals and paintings as I could. Still, only a small fraction of the amount of artwork there. I took about 800 pictures on this vacation until my camera ran out of memory at just the right time not to miss anything. A short drive from the monastery was a massive statue of Makarios, the famed Archbishop who later became president of Cyprus. From there a path lined with mosaics lead us to his burial place. Two guards stay there at all times, and their ability to keep a straight face astounded me. We were back on the twisty, narrow, up and down roads until we reached a tourist city by the name of Platres. There were many shops to look at and almost everybody bought something. After leaving there and passing more spectacular views we came to a nice modern winery. I tried a view sips and almost threw it up every time. The long day left us too tired to cook food once we got home so we decided to go to the village’s local restaurant. I made friends with the cats and we all enjoyed our time there. All and all Cyprus has been a wonderful vacation that came and went much too fast. There was so much we got to do and so much that we could have done if given more time. Cyprus offers so much for the amount of space and I hope someday I will get to experience this all again.