Limassol Centre

We took a taxi into the centre of town one morning. The intention was to take the bus but a taxi stopped first and offered to take us and two others waiting in for just Cy£1 each which is only 20c more than the bus and I think the Merc was probably a lot more comfortable. You will find that taxi drivers may sound their horn as they pas you if you are walking the main road in case you want to give up on the feet, which may well be the case as it's about 6 miles from hotel to Limassol centre, and not a particulary interesting walk along the coast road as it's just endless tourist bars and souvenier shops.

We started in the shopping area of Agiou Andreau which is a little pedestrian street with lots of little shops aimed at the tourists selling t-shirts, souveniers, dried fruit and nuts, handbags and the like. Walking down this road and on to the centre you get to the small castle of Limassol (not to be confused with the Collossi castle which is out of town). The castle doesn't lookmuch from the outside, but the interior contains and interesting museum whise exhibits occupy each nook and cranny of the many rooms and levels of the structure. You can climb up to the roof for a good view over Limassol. Entrance cost Cy£2.00 when we went and phoography is not allowed inside.
The square around the castle is lined with bars and cafes and is a very nice place to sit wih a drink. Some of the restaurants here are mentioned in the guide books as being very good places to eat, but the one we choose when we went back for an evening meal, 'To Frouria', was not paticularly great with the seafood meze we had. Still, the location by the lit up castle made it a very pleasant evening.
Walking back along the coast road, a much better place to eat (and kind of wish we'd gone back there for the evening meal) is 'La Mer' (lamer@cytanet.com.cy), a restaurant you come to just before the Municiple Gardens. Only wanting a light lunch I ordered a cheese and ham salad and my wife ordered a starter kalamari (squid), but when the food started arriving at first we assumed they'd got the wrong table as the few dips that the menu mentioned came with the salad tured out to be 11 extra dishes that covered our table. And the salad itself was vast, and the kalimari was virtualy an entire squid. We certainly couldn't finish all this (but had a damn good try) and the whole thing with water an extra plate of crocette potatos, which we certainly didn't need, came to Cy£10.95, or about UK£14.00. Bargin!The municiple garden are a well laid out area full of palm trees and greenery and nice for a walk about with lots of shade. There are peacocks showing off on the lawns and a small zoo costing 80c isa little depressing when you see the rather barren cages that the leopards and other animals have to live in.
On the Saturday evening there was a market stall fair that stretched down the promenade from just past the old port. The fair stalls where quite nostalgic as they were hings like throw the hoop over the prize (with the square stand that's virtually impossible to get the hoop over) and pin boards where you roll the ball down the board and see where it lands to determine which prize you win. There's also quite a few market stalls together with many stalls cooking corn on the cob,
Limassol is not a pretty city at all, but does have some charm in the old centre, so it's worth a look in the daytime and perhaps a few evenings out in the bars and restaurants.