What's On Cyprus

The location is wonderful, up in the hills, with absolutely stunning panoramic views overlooking the St. George coastline of Paphos.  There's over 100,000 square metres of lush green vegetation, ponds, flowers, and trees including the amazing Silk Floss Tree from South America, covered in thousands of spikes, it's just crazy !

My initial interest was to find out about their gins, Aris explained, "it's what originally brought us back to Cyprus, 'to create a quality craft gin'.  Our initial inspiration was the aroma of The Troodos Mountains after a long dry summer when it first rains and we wanted to capture exactly that and put it in a bottle and we called it Aoratas Dry Gin which in fact last year won a gold medal. 

I asked why their beers are so good;  Taras explained, "The biggest difference of Craft Beer is it has more flavour and taste, mainly because it's not filtered or pasteurised, making it a much richer flavour.  Craft Beer is like a finger print because we never brew our beer in a bad mood, that's how we are here at Octo and we hope you are just like us" …

I wanted to have a chat before Andreas gave me a personal tour of the museum, so we met upstairs in the cafe and ice cream parlour, my delicious cappuccino brewed with 'Vittorio Coffee' pure Arabica from Brazil.  I asked Andreas to tell me how it all started?  He said, "It started as a hobby, I would find old cars, in Cyprus, mostly Fords, buy them and restore them myself, to showroom perfection, sometimes having to source spare parts from all over the world.  Then he said, " Next thing you know, whenever my friends were selling a vintage or classic car, I would buy it".

One of the most impressive features of the Amathus Ruins is the Temple of Aphrodite, which I believe, was excavated in the 1980s.  The temple was a center of worship for the goddess of love and beauty and was believed to have been built in the 6th century BC.  The temple was adorned with beautiful sculptures and frescoes, many of which can still be seen today.