Nate and Kara explore Kyrenia Castle on their last day in North Cyprus, visiting a shipwreck museum with artifacts from a Greek merchant ship that sank around 300 BC. They eat kebabs and halloumi, drink Turkish coffee, and finish with a traditional Cypriot dinner.
Sam.
It is another beautiful, beautiful day in North Cyprus. What else is new? Every day here has been gorgeous and it is our last day here, which makes us really sad. We're really thankful for the opportunity to have partnered with Go North Cyprus this week. We have really fallen in love with this place.
Since it's our last day and we've been staring at this huge castle from our balcony, we thought we should go explore it. We also learned that there is a shipwreck museum inside the castle. So that should be pretty cool. But first we're going to have lunch and we're really excited about this local food that we just heard about.
Well, things don't always go as planned, but that's okay because we didn't have dinner plans and now we do.
We will be back.
Hopefully. We're gonna go get the kebabs that we passed on the way here that looked really good and go ahead and head to the castle.
Is that chicken? Yeah, that's chicken. That's lamb.
Okay.
You want lamb and chicken?
Yeah.
If I can make you mix half chicken or me.
Okay.
Mix perfect.
I'm so excited.
Me too. Can't go wrong with kebab.
And I love these salt and pepper shakers.
So disappointed about our lunch place being closed.
I'm glad. Our first restaurant of choice led us out of the main tourist area because that kebab shop was really good, really local and it had local prices.
And now we're heading to the castle. Hello.
Is this where we buy tickets? Yes. Are they 12 each?
We're entering this 10 tunnel that's going to take us to the Church of.
St George and it was built in the 12th century.
There's our hotel we've been staying at. That's our awesome rooftop patio. And there's our room.
We found the shipwreck museum and I'm.
So excited about this.
She gets excited about weird things like shipwrecks, cannons. These are officially the oldest salmons that I've ever seen. This sign says that they were picked in 288 AD and they were found on the ship.
Okay. According to Lonely Planet, this was a Greek merchant ship that sank off the kyrenia coast around 300 BC and was discovered by a local diver in 1967. Evidence suggests the boat sank because of piracy, because there were spear marks in this hull. And they found this thing called. They found this thing called a curse tablet on there. And pirates used to sink their ships with a curse tablet because they thought it would hide it at the bottom of the Sea forever. How crazy.
I'm glad we went to the castle after staring at it for four days, it was cool. Time for an afternoon pick me up.
Cyprus Turkish coffee.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you.
Awesome. Really good. We read about this place called Ali's Special Cafe on Lonely Planet. And sometimes places on Lonely Planet become overrun with tourists, and so they're not any good anymore. But I think we found a gym. There are only locals here, and they serve Cypriot Turkish coffee.
Wow. It's really sweet. I read that it's syrupy. Maybe they put syrup in it.
It's like sweet black sludge. Probably the thickest and the sweetest coffee I've ever had, but it is delicious. It is a good thing we did not find that place until the last day because I think we both would have developed an unhealthy addiction.
We've had a slight change in dinner plans. We are not going to the restaurant we found this morning.
Go North Cyprus wanted to make sure that we had an awesome last night here. So they've booked us at a fancy restaurant that serves delicious local Cypriot food. So that's we're heading now, and here we are.
This place is so cool. We have our own little area over here, and all the waiters are dressed in traditional Cypriot clothing, and I love it.
Speaking of, we are quickly running out of room on the table. Kara got the mixed grill, which came with a bunch of different mezzes, hummus, Cypriot salad, beetroot oranges, and some kind of cucumber sauce.
On our first day in North Cyprus, we had grilled halloumi at breakfast time at our hotel. We quickly decided it was our favorite cheese in the whole world. And since then, I've had it twice a day, every day since we've been here. This cheese has a really high heat tolerance, and so they're able to grab grill it without it melting everywhere. So it has this delicious grilled taste on it. And I'm obsessed. I think this is the best one we've had.
It's come to the point where we're stacking plates on top of other plates to fit stuff on the table.
I'm thinking this one is the lamb meatball.
Thank you.
How fun is that?
I've never seen an onion served like that before.
All right, back to my lamb meatball wrapped in animal fat. This is a traditional Cypriot meat. I'm really excited to try it.
I'm a fan.
How are two people supposed to eat all of this food? This is, like enough food for 10 people.
This was hands down the best meal we've had since we've been in North Cyprus. We ate way too much.
It was a fantastic way to end our last night here. Thank you, go North Cyprus, for having us.
1000 year old columns.
