We started today with a visit to Aphrodite’s rock— according to mythology this place is the birthplace of Aphrodite, the goddess of Cyprus. Visiting the site was nothing short of majestic, and the pictures don’t do it justice. It was truest aww inspiring— that feeling when you see a huge mountain. The rocks edges seemed to reach toward the sky— adding to the magical nature of the rock. There is also some very interesting mythology associated with the rock. It is said that whoever finds the place where Aphrodite came out of the rock will get a magical spell. If they are a man, they will get eternal youth, and if they are a woman they will get Aphrodite’s beauty. According to this legend, it must also be midnight, a full moon, and the swimmer must be fully naked.

Next for today, we took a stop to see some mosaics. The first mosaic we saw was from the Hellenistic period, before the Romans. It is noticeably more “rough around the edges” than the Roman mosaics— the stones selected were done so based on just color, leaving more empty spaces for grout. In this time, color was also more basic— with either black or light gray stones. This mosaic depicted a legend of a ship destroying monster: a female creature with the heads of 5 dogs and a tail. The rest of the mosaics were saw were from after the Hellenistic period— the Roman era. These mosaics were much more sophisticated. They had stained glass in order to achieve vibrant colors, and used stones beyond just gray and black. There is so much color sophistication that slightly darker stones are even used as shading! The stones are also more even— resembling a shape that is more square. This is because they were cut for the mosaic, and not just found. This goes to show the intricacies and difficulties in making later mosaics. The Roman mosaics also had tales of mythology attached to them. For example, the mosaic of Narthos shows a man who fell in love with himself, so much so that he would spend all day admiring his reflection in a lake. One day, he got so distracted by himself that he drowned— a story that gives us the modern term narcissist. Another mosaic showed the tale of the first wine drinkers, according to the mosaic wine was a gift from the gods.

After the mosaics, we were given free time in Paphos. I didn’t do anything super eventful. I got a nice lunch at a restaurant, I ate a traditional Greek/cypriot souvlaki which was very good. To my surprise, a restaurant next door named “the pelican” took their name literally— they brought out a pelican for their guests to see. This was my first time seeing a pelican and I was very surprised by the size of it. I am also surprised that it is legal to have a pelican here. After this, I did some gift shopping but wasn’t able to find much. I look forward to Nicosia tomorrow!