Visit to Athens

We just returned from a four-day trip to Athens. Athens, in January, experiences an average of five days of rain. If you have ever visited Athens in the summer, then you know that it is hot, sticky, and crowded with tourists. It's impossible to get a table at a restaurant, the ancient attractions like the Acropolis, Agora, and museums are crowded with long queues at the entrances, areas like the Plaka are crowded, and everything is more expensive. We've visited Athens four or five times over the years and love the city, just not in summer. We lucked out with the weather and enjoyed four days in Athens with no rain and perfect daytime temperatures for walking and exploring the city.

Cypriots, coming from an island of 1.2 million, love visiting Athens and Greece, with many taking empty suitcases to be filled with shopping. The language is the same, more or less, the culture is the same, more or less, and Athens has wonderful shopping for Cypriots. Our Ryanair flight from Paphos to Athens was full, almost entirely with Cypriots. When we arrived in Athens we joined the non-EU passport holders line of only four people, compared to the much longer EU passport holders line of about 150 people. A reversal of just about all our previous experiences with passport control in Europe.

As I remarked in a previous post, we applied for temporary residence visas which would allow us to stay longer than 90 days in every 180 in Cyprus. Those were approved and we received paper approval forms which we can use until we receive the actual temporary residence cards in about 4-6 months.

Strangely enough, on our return from Athens, the Greek border control officer asked to see our Cypriot temporary residence visa, while the Cypriot border control officer did not. One of my bugbears is how they stamp our passports in Europe. The rectangular immigration stamp, if positioned correctly, can fit four times into a passport page. If incorrectly positioned, one or sometimes two stamps can take up a passport page. This becomes an issue if you travel frequently and your passport can fill up before it expires. For exactly this reason, we got the extended US passport of 52 pages, versus the regular size of 28. My new passport, from 2023, already has quite a few pages filled with stamps.

One of the must sees in Athens are the Acropolis and the Parthenon on the Acropolis. Much of Western architecture owes its roots to ancient Greek design. The front of the US Supreme Court is a copy of the Parthenon. If one wants to see the Parthenon then visits to Athens, London, and Nashville are required. Athens has the original Parthenon, London has the so-called Elgin marbles taken from the Acropolis frieze by Lord Elgin and subsequently sold by him to the British Museum to cover debts from his divorce, and Nashville where a full-size copy of the Parthenon exists with a gilded statue of Athena inside.

We have had quite a lot of rain over the last month, but still not enough to substantially raise the water level in the reservoirs which are at 28% of capacity versus 55% on the same date last year. If we don’t get substantial rain in February, we are in for a very difficult summer with drastic water shortages.

The cross-Cyprus highway connecting Paphos, Limassol, Larnaca, and Nicosia was completed more than 25 years ago. Missing since then was a 4-lane highway connection between Paphos and Latchi/Polis (Poli Chrysochous). Latchi/Polis is a medium-sized town with a small port which is a port of entry with customs and immigration control, so it makes sense to finish the highway to Latchi/Polis. The new highway extension has been planned for several years and a contract to build the highway was awarded to a consortium called Kinyras who started work in 2023 with an announced completion date of December 2025 for the first phase. The first phase was of particular interest to Kallepia residents because the highway will skirt Kallepia with on and off-ramps right next to the entrance to the village. When completed it will shorten travel from Kallepia to Paphos, the airport, and provide fast, safe access to the Cross Island Highway. However, after starting roadworks along the first phase route, the consortium discovered that it was subject to unanticipated costs and attempted to renegotiate the already expensive contract with the government. Talks collapsed, the government fired the contractor and the road is currently in a state of limbo until a new contractor is found to finish the first phase at some indeterminate date.

Early signs of spring are appearing with almond trees in full bloom and winter flowers everywhere, but nights remain quite cool with lows of 6C and daytime highs of 16C. There is no sign at all of the rain so desperately needed. Till next time…