Cyprus 2023

During half term, my family and I took a much needed holiday to Cyprus. This was the second time that my wife and I had been, we have some very fond memories of the island and her people, but this would be the first time that my daughter had been to the island. With this in mind, we set off on our journey towards Aphrodites island.

As is normal, I took my trusty Minolta SRT 101 as my digital camera died during 2022, when we were in Botswana. I had bought some film from one of my local camera shop, Express Imaging. I bought 2 rolls of Fomapan film, in hindsight I should've bought some colour film as well.

We stayed near a town called Paphos. Situated on the south coast. It oozes history from the Ancient Greeks, Romans, Ottaman Empire and British Empire. As a bit of history buff, I was in heaven. It was fantastic. There was a place called the Archaeological Site of Nea Paphos, which contains a huge amount of Mosaics, a Roman villa... or two, and Odeon, all for around 10 Euros and you get to take as long as you like while there.

During our stay, we went on an excursion to Limassol, which isn't the capital of the island, it is the largest city on the island. When we were there, they gearing up for an island wide festival. Apparently Limassols festival is the largest one on the island, but we weren't there for that, we throughly enjoyed ourselves while we were there looking at the shops and, of course, taking more photos. It was fun while we there. We visited Limassol castle, formally a residence of King Richard The Lionheart and a British prison when Cyprus was under colonial rule. Unfortunately I don't have any photos from there, as they weren't good... the joys of film.

On the way back, we stopped of at Aphrodites Rock. In Greek mythology, this is the place where she was born and came ashore. 

Back in Paphos, it was festival time. So we trundled on down to the old town to experience the festival. And this is where the street photographer in me lept out and started to have fun with all the guys and girls in their extravagant costumes and floats. There was a lot of music, colour (this is when I regreted not taking at least one roll of colour film - stupid me), silly string and fun.

This festival has its roots in Ancient Greece. The festival was in honour of Dionysus, the Greek God of food and wine. 
Anyway, the very next day, we were on our way back home so sunny England.

All of these photos were taken on my Minolta SRT101. 35mm Fomapan film.

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