Monday 
25.8.2025 
13.31km Total: 219.92km 
Today I've booked a walking tour called "Green line and buffer zone" with a woman called Eleni.
The meeting point was at the checkpoint at Ledra Palace and it turns out that there won't be more than four of us on the entire tour.
It's me, an Australian couple and their adult daughter.
The guide Eleni recounts the history of why the city was divided and how the buffer zone has developed over the years.
The accepted name for the division is the green line for such a simple reason that the commander of the first peacekeeping force on the island drew it with a green pen.
Eleni herself was born on the north side and was four years old when her family was given ten minutes to leave their home and flee to the Greek Cypriot side.
The family then fled to Great Britain where Eleni was educated and raised, after which as an adult she met another Cypriot expat and they jointly decided to move back to the Island.
Despite what she had experienced, there was no bitterness at all in her story, on the contrary, she urged reconciliation.
It must mean that there is some kind of hope for the future, even though the city has been divided for around fifty years.
(She did, however, bite like a cobra when I called the port city I had arrived in Girne (which is the Turkish name). It's name is Kyrenia and always thus shall be.
There seems to be a bit of a Derry/Londonderry phenomenon over the place names on the northern side.)
When we part ways, the guided tour with the subsequent pleasant coffee has lasted for just over three hours, which was the best time I have spent on anything since I came here.
So even though sixty euros for a guided tour may sound like a lot, I think it was absolutely worth every penny.
After this, I have lunch and then go to something I have been looking forward to since I arrived here on Friday but which has been closed all weekend: The Cyprus Classic Motorcycle Museum.
It is a private collection that amounts to 450 machines, of which just over a hundred are in the showroom, which is so cramped that the bikes are packed tightly together.
Overall, it was a very nice collection with a couple of real gems from brands I have never even heard of before.
The rest of the afternoon I stroll around quite aimlessly.
When you go over to the north side via the Ledra Street checkpoint, you almost get a tax free vibe as the first thing you'll enter is a pure shopping district for mostly clothes and accessories and the surrounding area is also very shopping oriented but then more oriented towards phones and home electronics.
I didn't make any major purchases as the clothes are obviously pirated brand clothes which you could risk simply getting confiscated by Cypriot customs as pirated copies are banned on the south (EU) side.
I spend the rest of the evening at a bar before it starts to get time for a bite to eat again.
Walking tour, Ledra Palace
There are many buildings in the green zone that are falling into disrepair as they are legally still owned by those who lived in them but they are not allowed to return to their homes.
However, there are exceptions as this building was under renovation and our guide, thanks largely to her own curiosity, managed to persuade the owner to let us in and take a look.
With this kind of signage, it seems like a reunion isn't exactly right around the corner.
Paphos Gate
You have to be a little understanding of the gate starting to rot a little as it is 450 years old!
An abandoned checkpoint
An unassuming building that housed a Toyota dealership before the war.
As previously mentioned, everything legally still belongs to those who owned the buildings but it must be left untouched so there are still Toyotas inside the building from the seventies with 0 miles on the odometer.
A British documentary filmmaker, Ben Fogle made an episode in Cyprus where he follows UN forces in the green zone where they, among other things, go down into the basement of this building.
The guide Eleni has apparently begged and pleaded with the owner of this Bonneville to let her restore it as it is in a place in the zone they have opened to its owners again, but he won't let it go.
Cyprus Classic Motorcycle Museum
A market on the Turkish Cypriot side
