The tour starts

The tour starts

[ Mar.2015 ] We joined the tour from Paphos to the Troodos Mountains, inland in Cyprus.

Usually when we join a local tour, we have one tour guide who speaks English and some other languages such as French or German on the bus for the tourists from all over the world, but this one was different.

We had two guides, one spoke English and the other Russian.

There were about 20 tourists in the bus and a half of them were Russian and the other half was mixture, many of whom were English.

The two guides gave us explanations alternately, but even considering the different structures of the languages, I am sure the Russian explanation was longer.

When we got off the bus, we divided into two groups, English and Russian.

The fist place we visited was Chrysorrogiatissa Monastery (this photo is the view from there).

This place was built in the middle of the 12th century, because they found an icon which was supposed to be painted by Evangelist Luke by receiving the message from God.

Currently the monastery is run only by the abbot himself.

Apparently he is qualified restorer of icons and after working in Italy, he came back here.

I could feel that our English guide, Mary looked up to him very much.