Can you tell that I am yearning? I haven’t had a holiday in so long I’m dwelling on past adventures for an inordinate amount of time. I want to get on a plane, I want to go somewhere hot, somewhere interesting and exotic, somewhere new to explore.

This time last year I was still brown(ish) and flush from a wonderful two weeks in Cyprus, the highlight of those two weeks was, for me anyway, a visit to Nicosia.

To cut down on hassle my fella and I decided to catch a coach tour from our resort, Limassol for the princely sum of 9 Cypriot pounds. The provision of a tour guide on the way, pointed out interesting places we passed, made this a far less boring way to travel.

We were parked outside of the four hundred-year-old Venetian walls, where modern Nicosia and the ancient city meet. The main shopping area is within the old city walls, a short walk in the shade. Walking past the obligatory old men spending the day in a park benches drinking coffee and eating olives any route through narrow streets will eventually lead you to the centre of town.

We bought a small piece of lace (for my mum) from a shop which was little more than a plaster room, sold buy a wizened old man, which his equally wizened old wife making the lace outside the shop. We browsed, without hassle, through all the little shops slowly working our way through to the main commercial area.

Definitely worth a visit is the eight storey high Woolworth’s. Now, Woolworth’s in Cyprus is a whole different kettle of fish to the one we get in the UK, this is a large department store with a supermarket on the lower ground floor, make-up and perfume on the ground floor and various men’s and women’s apparel on the upper floors. The last three floors or so have no shops, but lead to a viewing gallery on the 8th floor. The gallery provides a wonderful opportunity to view the entire city, most notably the Turkish side for the nominal entry fee of 5O cents. Be warned that the gallery can get quite bust at times and people will jostle for use of the binocular and the lifts will be full (we climbed up the stairs, oh dear, no a good idea)

So, what to look at from the viewing gallery? Well the most obvious thing is the Turkish side of Nicosia. Nicosia is now the only city in Europe that is militarily divided. The divide began in the 1974 when Turkish troops invaded Cyprus and occupied around a third of the island, the occupation is still in place and Nicosia is divided right down the middle. From the viewing gallery it is easy to see the Turkish flag emblazoned in the mountainside as a big up yours to Greek Cyprus, with binoculars you can also see the smaller moon and star of Islam underneath. Displays around the room provide a history of the city, and it various landmarks. A sound display recounts the Turkish invasion in a number of different languages (however there is more than a little bias, as you would expect)

The viewing platform is a small metal climbing frame which allows you to look out over the buffer zone, which it about 25 yards wide, into the Turkish side of Nicosia. Occasionally you can see a glimpse of Turkish soldiers patrolling the other side. The bit in the middle, the buffer zone, is fascinating, left exactly as it was on the day of the invasion. Now crumbling away you can still see a scrap of curtain up the window and a chair in one of the buildings, its really rather eerie.

After a spot of lunch it was time to go home. Eateries aren’t as plentiful as you may find in more dedicated tourist resorts but finding somewhere with good food and reasonably priced posed no problem (although we had to wolf it down because we’d run out of time).