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Karen Barrett |
| Registered: | 17 May 2006 | | Last visit: | 21 December 2007 |
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| Protaras Travel Guide: Protaras - A lovely little holiday place
| | Written by Karen Barrett on 08 Jun 2006 about a trip in Oct 2005.
Trip was for a couple on holiday. Karen Barrett would definitely visit again.
| Protaras shopping |   7.0 | We shopped mainly for souvenirs. Leather is cheap and you can pick up some lovely plates and photo frames as gifts. There are opticians and electrical shops, but the dvd's are obviously copies so steer clear! There are lots of supermarkets selling food and gifts.
The newspapers are the previous day so you can keep more or less up to date if you want to. Magazines are expensive, a Chat magazine which is say 80p here, will be around double that. Suncream is not too dear. Cigarettes and alcohol are very cheap, especially the wine. |
Protaras nightlife | 6.0 | | We were limited to where we went, due to the resort closing around us in the second week that we were there. Also we are not party animals, so each day when we were done at the beach we would change, wonder up to the town and find some food and then be back in our room by 10 probably! There are a couple of clubs and a lot of noisy pubs. Elvis is still alive in Cyprus and sings every night in different bars!! There is a lot of karaoke. The Love Boat is probably the best for a variety of entertainment, something different every night, such as hypnotism, films, football, singers and karaoke. We like the Friends Bar which showed non-stop Friends dvd's. This came in very handy when the weather turned bad. Also the evenings were very cool, so nice to sit inside and watch tv with cocktail |
Protaras restaurants | 10.0 | There are lots of restaurants, we meant to try several but unfortunately a lot were closed in the second week . We stayed from 23 October to 7 November and Protaras closes on 31 October.
Nicolas Taverna - an authentic cypriot restaurant - serving well cooked local food in an authentic clay oven. My husband had the speciality lamb kleftico and I had chicken in mushroom sauce. Each meal served with rice, potatoes and veg. They gave us free salad and wine. They also took credit cards.
Friends Pub - At the other end of the scale, this serves lovely cocktails, beer and English food. It was great for a cheap meal, like omelette or gammon.
The locals also recommend Diva and Romeos. |
Protaras attractions | 8.0 | | There is a dancing water show at the top end of Protaras near McDonalds. This is well worth a visit. It costs £5 to get in and they expect you to buy a drink when you are in there, but it is entertaining and lasts for an hour. Also the lovely Elios church up on the hill. The climb looks daunting but its not so bad and the views are fantastic. The church is lovely too. There is a zoo which we did not visit and there are plenty of boat trips to go on. Nearby there are water parks and so on. There is also crazy golf at a local hotel. |
Protaras day trips | | We went on a couple of day trips. A bus trip to Paphos was nice, we stopped at the Kourion ampitheatre on the way, and also went to the mosaics in Paphos. Paphos has a lot of culture but we did not have enough time there.
If we go back to Cyprus, we are going to hire a car so that we can see more of the island.
We also went on a jeep safari to Northern Cyprus. We had to take our passports and get a visa stamped. We went to Kyrenia via Salamis and Famagusta. We were the only people on the trip and the driver explained a lot of history to us about the takeover of Northern Cyprus by the Turks.
Another trip worth going on is to the Troodos mountains, where you see a different side of the island. I would recommend booking these trips privately on the street as you will save a lot of money rather than booking them with your reps. |
Protaras History and Culture | | Protaras is a tourist resort in the Famagusta area. It basically closes down at the end of each season and we were told that no locals actually lived there as it is mainly a tourist resort. The area has been built up in the past couple of years with fancy paving and fountains at each end.
Known as the strip, Protaras is on a one way system off the main Paralimni road. Full of hotels, bars and shops you can buy just about any kind of souvenir that you want.
The Famagust district is the one closest to Northern Cyprus. Northern Cyprus is under Turkish rule since 1974. There is a lot of history about Cyprus which is worth finding out before you go over there. Famagusta itself is the ghost town. We visited there on a jeep safari trip and it is very eerie to see all these houses/hotels fenced off. We walked along the main beach. There is barbed wire in front of wrecked hotels and the locals (Turkish Cypriots) go and sit on the beach in front of all this!! The beach is covered in broken rusted sunbeds from long ago. We could not take photos of this as we might have been arrested by the Turkish guards who police the border. |
Getting to Protaras | | | We flew with British Airways into Larnaca airport, then had a taxi ride of about an hour to Protaras. |
Getting around Protaras | | The local buses are plentiful although look a bit knackered. Car hire is the best way to get out of Protaras. |
When to visit Protaras | | May and October are very similar in temperature. Its hot enough to swim and tan, but not so hot that you cant breath or sleep at night. May obviously has more daylight hours than October. July and August can be unbearable in the heat. I would like to go in May to see what Protaras is like at the start of the season. I expect it is totally different in July/august, with a lot more people there than when we were there in October. |
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Protaras Hotel Reviews
Karen Barrett reviewed these Protaras hotels...
| Capo Bay review |  | | Capo Bay - lovely location, nice hotel | | We stayed at the Capo Bay Hotel for our honeymoon in October 2005. We booked a twin inland view room to save money as our travel agent said we would probably be upgraded, and we were, to a sea view... |
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