What's On Cyprus

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" …

George showed me around the grounds explaining; "You can learn so much about marine life here, and rivers and swamps and the Penguins, the first ever in the Mediterranean region, naturally kept comfortable in the appropriate climate controlled environment".  Just watching one of their videos I amazingly learned that all Gold Fish don't have stomachs, so they have to keep eating, which means you should feed them small amounts 5 times a day, probably why I was never successful keeping one, but now I know!

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. 

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.

As I arrived, my first impressions were it looked quite 'normal', a fairly plain frontage, edged in gorgeous natural stone walls, wonderful wooden shutters, but through the big antique wooden front doors and into the lounge and you're in another world ... making it obvious why its a favourite for wedding planners ...

... Anyway, I imagine there'll be a few clinking bottles en route !