Saturday January 20, 2006 - Stellar Euro Driver

Saturday morning began with me trekking out to National/Alamo rental car to pick up our Nissan Micro for the weekend. And lucky for us, since Cyprus is an ex-British commonwealth, driving (and shifting for that matter) are on the left-hand side of the road. I was confident in my hand/eye/foot/pedal/wrong side of the road skills even though:

a) My previous international driving experiences were less than stellar – Grenada: shaved at least a year of both our lives (we’ll leave it at that), Germany: backed/bottomed out into a cornfield, Fiji: wrong way in a roundabout, Italy: rear-ended a DHL delivery truck at 3 miles an hour for no good reason (mild confusion with the brake/clutch stuck in traffic on a hill), Sicily: scraped (6 inches) the side of the car trying to squeeze through a winding Euro street…to name a few. And
b) Per one of our several travel guides: “Cypriots can be reckless drivers, ignoring red lights, and overtaking on bends.”

I made a "C" pickup back at our flat and then we were off. "C's" invaluable map reading and occasional “my side” reminders (drive on the left side when making a turn) were key to our incident/accident/stall free day weekend. We were moving along at a steady clip on a somewhat curvy road under the posted “60 kph” and I was thinking that it seemed a little fast. Based on ‘b’ above I figured the Cypriots just drive like maniacs, and then I realized mph were the dominant numbers on our speedometer, while kph were itty tiny. Following my Nascar debut, I reduced my speed to kph.

Our Saturday drive made the following stops along the way:

a) Kourion – an ancient hilltop city with a 3,500 seat Roman theater, several remains of residences with original mosaics, and great Mediterranean sea views.

b) Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates – complex of temples and shrines to the sun god Apollo.

c) Petra tou Romiou (Aphrodite's shores )– legend has it that Aphrodite was born from the sea foam at this beach. We also found this lost NASA astronaut.

d) We dropped in on two beautiful resorts – Columbia Resort and Aphrodite Hills InterContinental.
e) We finished with an evening stroll and in the city of Pafos (located on the western coast and founded in 320 BCE). Like the locals, we also partook in watching of a football match while we drank our tea/hot chocolates/cappuccinos.