Another day, another set of Byzantine-era churches! There’s 10 churches listed as UNESCO sites; yesterday we saw three, and today we intended to see another five.
We got up a bit earlier so that we could arrive at the first church closer to 10am.
We saw Archangelos Michail in Pedoulas, Nikolas tis Stegis in Kakopetria, and Panagia tis Podythou in Galata. All were excellent, although I’m writing a couple days later, so it’s a bit fuzzy.
The drive from Galata to Kalopanayiotis was within 10km of the buffer zone with North Cyprus, and we saw a couple UN vehicles. We also saw the sea off in the distance. I hadn’t realized we were so far north on the island.
In Kalopanagiotis, we visited the Agios Ionannis Lambadistis Monastery, one of the larger sites. It was impressive!
We stopped for lunch in town and had some more grilled lamb, which again was excellent.
Then off to Moutoullas to see Panagia tou Moutoullas. Unfortunately, it closed at 3pm for the day.
Overall, we saw seven of the ten UNESCO churches, and we were glad that we did. They’re still somewhat off the radar (we had them mostly to ourselves). Due to the small roads to get to most of them, they probably won’t be on the bus tour route anytime soon. We did run into a group of about 20 traveling in multiple cars, but that was about it. The paintings in the churches reminded us of the rock hewn churches in Tigray, Ethiopia.
We got back home and relaxed before heading down for dinner. Fortunately for us, our final course didn’t arrive, so we had a much better portioned meal. (It’s a set price for a multiple course dinner, so over the three days we’ve gotten better at excluding some dishes).
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