Cyprus 8-Day Tours and Trips

Awesome trip with a home base in an amazing hotel with great views, pool and breakfast buffet. The walks were different terrain every day, beautiful scenery. Gizer was an excellent, knowledgeable, funny guide. He arranged dinners, trips, could not ask for a better leader of the group. The only complaint: very hot weather that made the hiking less enjoyable than ideal. Definitely recommended!

Overall an enjoyable week of walking with a great guide (Gizer) and driver (Omer). The walks were as stated in the trip notes and places visited were definitely well worth the walks. A great group of 11 in total, that definitely helped make the week a lovely break. The hotel Pia Bella is well situated in Kyrenia, with excellent facilities, and the staff were all very helpful. If you enjoy walking and visiting historical sites, this trip is for you.

The island has a fascinating history and it was good to try to understand the recent history that has created North Cyprus, whilst participating in walks with great scenery. Plus visits to castles, abbeys and monasteries. Made even better by a great group of fellow travellers. The Pia Bella Hotel rooms are spacious and of excellent quality and good air conditioning. The breakfast buffet offers a wide choice. But if you favour European continental breakfast, there is no fish, very little meat and no pastries or croissants. There is an excellent pool, open till 6pm. The bar was often busy but service was good and prices competitive.

Scenic walks (apart from the introductory one on Sunday which was a bit of a walk to nowhere) with great views from the top of the hills. It was a bit hot but all the walkers coped with the permanent sunshine. Gizer, the leader, is a very good organiser, with perfect timing and good knowledge of the history of the places we visited – Girne, Bellapais Abbey, Saint Hilarion, Kantara and Buffavento Castle (the walk up to it recompense the walker with breath-taking views). He also organised the optional but very informative excursions to Famagusta and Nicosia which offered us the chance to find out a lot of facts about places we knew only from the news. I would also like to commend Omar, the driver, very efficient as well, helpful and funny; he helped me learn more Turkish language than I knew before 😉. The food was good, and the best dinners we had were at Niazi’s and Eminem (no connection with the rapper 😉). The best lunch was at the Caravan Serai in Nicosia – thank you Gizer! Pia Bella Hotel was clean with good sized rooms, very professional, polite, and friendly service, good range of food items at the breakfast. Al in all, a very rewarding holiday – Thanks to Exodus, Gizer, and everybody else who made it happen.

The walks were amazing, the food was great, the hotel was excellent being about a 20 minute walk from the beautiful harbour of Kyrenia and the weather was warm after a wet first morning!

North Cyprus is an overlooked destination. The history, castles and scenery are amazing. The walks are of reasonable difficulty due to the terrain, and for May the heat made it worse, but a fabulous holiday nonetheless.