Paphos; Thursday, 13 October, 2022

I had a bit of a lie in and then wandered down to breakfast, sat out in the hotel garden which was a very relaxing way to start the day. Fuelled for the day I headed out into town and started by wandering along the seafront walkway into the harbour area.

As I reached the harbour area I spotted an open-top bus tour so decided to hop on that and do a couple of circuits round the town to get an overview of the city and to find out a bit more of the history of Paphos, though the commentary on the tour was a little lacking in detail. After the second loop I stayed on the bus for a couple of stops to get out to the Tombs of the Kings, located a couple of Kilometres from the centre of town.

The Tombs of the Kings doesn’t actually contain any tombs of monarchs of any gender, but does included the tombs of many of the leading families of the day in the Paphos of at least 2,000 years ago.

The tombs are all hand carved from the rock, which considering how intricate they are with entire courtyards and buildings hollowed out from the rock, is pretty impressive. There are over 100 tombs dotted across the site, but 9 of them are particularly noteworthy due to their size and intricacy.

From the tombs I walked the 2Km or so back to the Fabrika Hill archaeological area. This area houses a number of different archaeological relics including two catacombs that you can wander down into, an Hellenic theatre and the hill itself which has been carved out over the millennia into a series of large interconnected chambers, to the point that there’s probably now more empty space than hill in the hill.

From the hill it was a short walk down to see the Ottoman era baths and a Byzantine church before finally wandering back down to the seafront and onto the hotel.

As I had time before it closed I had a quick swim in the pool before heading back to my room, having a shower and then heading down for dinner.