Before the museum we take a detour to a store near our AirBnB that we saw the previous days. The attraction is that it is a Romanian goods store and we are curious what it can offer. Unfortunately there is no good parking so one of us has to drive the car in circles while the rest of the group enters the store and buys multiple items including the famous Romanian food “mici”. Guess now we know what we will have for dinner.
The museum is a bit of a question mark as we need close by parking due to our relatives having some mobility issues. And there is no parking advertised. But we find the museum garden entrance and what seems to be the visitor parking, unfortunately it is occupied. Still we spy an open spot further in near an outdoor exhibit where other cars are parked and we decide to park there. No one is screaming at us so on we go to find the museum entrance. The area around the museum is quite interesting and busy and we are happy that we found some parking – as long as the car is still there when we return :).
The entrance has many stairs which our relatives wouldn’t be able to handle but luckily there is also an elevator that deposits us right at the door. And inside there is no one. Like literally no one besides two employees. We ask them if the parking spot we used is ok and they say yes – which it should be given that the visitor parking is full with no other visitors?!
With no one around we have time to look closely at the exhibits, they are surprisingly varied and interesting as well as well labeled.
There are objects from across Cyprus including a few exhibits about some burials that were found in the area, they are quite interesting.
A whole section is dedicated to Kition, the ancient city that stood here but given that it was a major port many finds are quite cosmopolitan, with amphoras and pottery from across the Greek world.
The pottery is quite interesting, it looks to be more casual than what we have seen in other museums, the drawings are less precise somehow, like naive art.
Cyprus was part of the Egyptian kingdom for a while and during that time there was a sarcophagus fad on the island with a few found around Kition which was the major port at the time.
It is surprising to us how many artifacts were found even though not the whole city is Kition is excavated and how well preserved they are. Especially the pottery objects are well preserved the stone ones less so, at least the ones in the museum.
The clearest example of the worse preservation of the stone objects is the statue hall where on one side are the torsos without heads and on the other side are the heads – no idea why someone decided to separate the heads from the torsos.
Outside there is a large mosaic and some ruins that supposedly cannot be visited, according to the museum attendant, even though there seems to be an entrance towards them. He directed us towards the official Kition ruins a bit farther afield that supposedly have a large parking area and we decide to visit them on another day.
On the way back to the AirBnB we stop at a supermarket right as it starts raining but when we finally get back it is clear skies again and we explore the neighborhood a bit while also counting the ships that enter the harbor.
And then it is time to eat our “mici”, it is a whole enterprise grilling them, preparing them and then of course eating them. We seem to have overestimated how many we can eat as quite a few remain after our feast. We are quite full now so we just exchange stories on the patio for a while before going to sleep for the night.
