We started the day by sleeping until we’re done. An easy thing to do, just don’t set an alarm, when you wake up turn around and check if you don’t fall back asleep. One of the best things to do while vacationing. For us, vacations are not about packing as much things in a day as we can, it’s about optimizing quality of time together.
We headed to breakfast at 📍Wagmi Cafe. They rated well in my specialty coffee research and, indeed, they delivered on the coffee. The food was good too. The other things that set Wagmi aside was that it is woman owned and has an interior courtyard with a small pond in the middle and a couple of cats lounging around.
Our main destination for the day was the 📍Holy Monastery of St Nicholas of the Cats. Avid readers will know that we’re not big on religious sites but this one has cats (plural!). The monastery traces its paws (and stones) back to 327 AD, courtesy of Saint Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine the Great. After arriving in Cyprus, she found the place absolutely slithering with poisonous snakes—snakes so numerous even the monks had tapped out and the locals had packed up their fishing rods in fear. Helena’s solution was to deploy an elite squad of 1,000 whiskered mercenaries. These cats weren’t just there for belly rubs: legend has it they were trained to respond to two bells—one for mealtime, and one for “snake-hunting o’clock.” Monks had to feed the cats twice daily, partly so they wouldn’t indulge exclusively in venomous reptilian cuisine and die off.
Monks lived at the site until 1570, when the Ottoman invasion forced them out (and presumably, the cats had no say in tenancy rights). The monastery fell into ruins, then was revived, abandoned, reconstructed, and finally turned into a convent in 1983. Today, just a handful of nuns serve as caretakers of both the monastery and its meowing, purring population—now numbering over 100 cats.
Thanks to centuries of this strange human-feline alliance, Cyprus has developed its own unofficial sub-breed: the so-called “Cyprus cat.” Local breeders and cat lovers claim that the Cyprus cat is an informal, natural “breed”—with a reputation for being sweet-tempered, savvy, and able to climb pretty much anything. Sadly, there’s very little evidence (as in none) that the breed is related the to the original cats or that it’s actually a breed. That said, the cats in the monastery and most cats we’ve met in Cyprus to date are very sweet.
The visit of the monastery itself can be described very simply. Get out of your car, be greeted by a clowder of about 5 cats. Say hello, pet them a little, keep going. Find the first stone wall, sit on it to say hello and pet the second clowder of cats you meet, have a cat sit on your lap and start purring. Stay there for 15 minutes. Disappoint the cats who would have happily lounged the rest of the afternoon with and start walking to the actual entrance to the courtyard of the monastery—did you think we were in by now? Sit by the entrance, to greet the next group of cats—did I mention a group of cat is a clowder? Repeat the cat jumping on you, purring, petting the cats and all that. Another 15 minutes or so later make your way to the one of the monastery buildings, sit down on the first bench you see to greet the next cats, repeat the 15 minutes meet and purr. By then you notice the table a couple of meters over that sells souvenirs to help finance the monastery, browse their wares, find nothing to your taste but leave money in the cookiethin that serves as the honor system cash register. Exhausted with that, sit on another bench, repeat the 15-minute clowder purring and cuddling session. You’ve seen it all. Now all you have to do is retrace your steps back to your car, stopping on the way for goodbye pets and purrs on your lap. Get in your car and encourage the cats lounging in the shadow of your car to move as you’ll need to move your car. Making your car make noise works pretty well but it must not stop. As soon as the car seems stopped they will go back to lounging in its shadow. Get in your car and, very slowly roll out while checking every centimetre the car moves that no cats are in danger. Finally depart after a more than one hour petting cats. You’ll have been enriched by the experience and you’ll miss your our own catsts dearly.
By now, we’ve seen pretty much all of the downtown core of Limassol. We went for a walk along the Limassol Promenade, a kilometer-long park along the sea with art. We had passed through parts of it on our way to the surprise wine festival when we arrived in Limassol (see day 22). Visiting a park at night never does it justice and our visit confirmed the rule.
Having finished our walk we headed back to 📍Guest Cafe Bar to visit our friend the cat. We didn’t get a clue on where to sit as our friend wasn’t lounging about. We settled near our last spot and within minutes had a visitor. We shared a couple of pets but she did not settle as another cat was impinging on her territory. Our feline friend was on high alert and had to escort them away before returning and making the rounds of her territory.
Our wine depleted and our small plate eaten, we departed for our Airbnb to await dinner at 📍Dionysus Mansion… well as it turned out it’s the mansion’s courtyard. We were seated in a very large courtyard with cats making their rounds and inspecting tables for possible customers who would pay off. As soon as our meat order was served we were inspected and, the moment Karine started distributing some of our morsels, she was attended by multiple cats. For context, when there are cats at a restaurant, we carve out a small portion of appropriate food for them out of our portion and Karine distributes the food. Something we would never do at home with our cats but spoiling “wild” cats seems fair.
To summarize the day: cat with breakfast, cats at the sanctuary, cat at our apero and cats at dinner. Cats all around.
Tomorrow we’re moving for the last time before beginning the two-day trip home. We’ll be spending 3 nights in Kato Paphos (Paphos’ beach town) before driving back to Larnaca and flying to Athens. On our way to Paphos we’ll stop for a hike in Cyprus wine country.
Places
Wagmi Coffee · Limassol
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Holy Monastery of St Nicholas of the Cats
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Guest Cafe Bar · Limassol
Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
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Dionysus Mansion · Limassol
Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
maps.app.goo.gl
