It’s the last day of Week 1 here for this Plus3 program. Our morning starts as usual with us driving down to Limmasol (we have literally gone here 4 out of the 5 days this week), but with a small twist: instead of leaving at 8, we got to leave at 9:30 (aka we got to sleep in). We were driving there for the last time in a while to visit the Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM) Maritime Training Center. To explain through analogy, this is like university for people on cargo ships. They also have simulators in which they train the sailors which are really cool. Sadly, my tour group didn’t get to play with any of the simulators, but they looked really fun to use. We then headed to the Koumbaris Fish Tavern in Zygi which had really fresh seafood. The only problem is that we had to get the meat ourselves, which takes a lot of work for not a lot of food. By the end of the meal, my plate looked like this:

After that stop, we stopped at the Hala Sultan Tekke, which is a mosque built near the burial site of Umm Haram, one of the Islamic prophet Muhammed’s original followers. Despite its important part in Muslim history, the mosque itself less decorative than the monastery we visited yesterday. Because of that underwhelmingness, it was sort of like a breath of fresh air. Our next stop was St Lazarus Church, a church where St Lazarus (the same Lazarus Jesus revived) is buried. The actual underground burial place was really short so I had to crouch the entire time. The inside of the actual church was gold plated. It was a nice place. We then had free time in Larnaca where we could either get more souvenirs or go to the beach. While I did not go in (I will do that soon), the Mediterranean was still very beautiful. I also found a statue of the Lion of Venice which was cool because Venice’s colonization of the island has not been talked about that much. So overall I had a pretty good day.