Dayyyyy 7! Can’t believe we are already halfway done the trip, it’s gone by so fast! Today we checked out of our hotel and headed to Aphrodite’s rock and Paphos before coming to Nicosia. We started our day by visiting Aphrodite’s rock, which is believed to be where Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, emerged from the sea. Dimitra told us about a legend that if you swim to the rock where Aphrodite was born on the midnight of a full moon you would gain some of Aphrodite’s beauty if you were a girl or eternal youth if you were a guy. Dimitra said that she was considering taking a swim once the water gets warmer later in the year, which I thought was pretty funny. The water seemed to be a lot rougher compared to what we had experienced before at Fig Tree Bay and Larnaca, so I don’t know if I personally would go swimming there. The beach itself was beautiful with many shades of blue coloring the water. The rocks themselves were much bigger than I imagined with them towering over me. They also seemed to extend a bit out towards the sea.
We then visited the town of Paphos to first look at mosaics from all across the years. The oldest one dated back to around 300 BC, during the Hellenistic period. It depicted a sea monster with 5 dog heads, however due to perspective there was only 3 heads shown. The sea monster was depicted to be holding something that looked like a cross, but it turned out to be a mast of a ship. Many seafarers feared the sea monster even if it was only a legend. The mosaic was made out of little pebbles from the sea, which differed from many of the younger mosaics. Many of the mosaics had geometric designs surrounding them. Many of the mosaics told a story, such as the story of narcissus. The mosaic depicted Narcissus looking at his reflection in the water, which ultimately became his demise. He was so obsessed with himself that he one day fell into the water and drowned. His name seemed very similar to the word narcissist, so I connected the clues and realized that narcissist is based off of this myth. In the mosaics many of the brighter colors would not be rocks of sorts but were instead a type of glass I believe. Like the blues, greens, reds, and other colors that weren’t black or white were usually not rocks it seemed. My favorite mosaic was one of 9 squares each with a different design/person in it, with the four corners representing 4 different seasons. Each square was so intricately decorated and seeing how they depicted each season was so interesting.
After exploring the mosaic museum we got to eat lunch and walk around Paphos. I ended up getting breakfast, since the only breakfast I was ever able to get was the hotel breakfast. I ended up getting 4 pancakes with Nutella and strawberries. They were so delicious! Also during our lunch the restaurant next to us brought out a pelican, and it started wandering around the area. I had never seen a pelican up that close, let alone a pink pelican. After lunch we walked around and shopped. In one of the stores there was a cat taking a little nap kn one of the shelves which I thought was cute. It was a short day but enjoyable nonetheless!
