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The Cyprus Flea Markets
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The Cyprus Flea Markets
A CyprusForTravellers Guide
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Dmitry Gridin
Author: Dmitry Gridin
Translation: Daniel Barnes
07.11.2020

“Flea markets of Cyprus.” If you enter this phrase into Google, a sloe of links to various articles will come crawling up. You can read about any of their flea markets and, at first glance, everything is great. But, in fact, most of the articles on this topic are just loaded with errors, inaccuracies, and inconsistencies. Our journalist, Dmitriy Gridin, decided to hit up all the flea markets of Cyprus himself, and check the accuracy of these articles on the Internet. He also took it upon himself to find out what can ruin a tourist’s trip and mood and take away precious time.

I have been living in Limassol for three years. Frankly, I must admit that I have never been particularly interested in the subject matter of flea markets. I had been just a couple of times, no more. Therefore, my journey will be the same as that of any other ordinary stranger, just like a Cyprus tourist. Of course, in order to find each of the markets and get into each one, I started by arming myself with Google, and then getting into the car and heading off.

Everything that I tell you here is my own personal experience, which may or may not coincide with yours. But the article is not intended to give you 100% objective information, or to prove that I am right and someone else is wrong. No, the goal is to, rather, give an ordinary person’s subjective view on this topic.

The Cyprus Flea Markets

Limassol

Given that I, myself, live in Limassol, I decided to start with it. I was able to find information on three flea markets in what is the largest coastal city of Cyprus.

 

Fasuri Flea Market

What They’re Saying Online: This is the city’s main flew market. All guides point you to it; up to three hundred stands. To see everything, you need to spend as much as four hours there. Open on Sundays.

What It’s Really Like: Going off of such a serious description, I expected to see market, worthy enough to compete with those of Ankara and Istanbul. To be honest, it was somewhat embarrassing to find out that the main flea market was in the middle of nowhere: seven kilometers from the city center and, to put it mildly, in a not very densely populated area. This does not really fit in with the mentality of the Cyprus locals, who don’t particularly like to travel to far-off distant lands in order to go to the market, but instead prefer to find and mine everything important and necessary closer to their home.

I visited the Fasuri Flea Market twice. Part of the flea market is out in the open, and part of it is in a special pavilion. Regardless, during both times at the market there were about thirty people, including vendors.

Yes, of course, there is a certain homage there paid to the 70s. The pavilion itself is old. Antique slot machines stand in the corner. The café seems like it comes right out of old Sunday’s past. The Cypriots that sit there are the same locals that met there and spent their youth there.

Everything around is shrouded in this air of antiquity, but…just a touch. By and large, it is not very clear what to do here. Very few items. Just a smidge interesting. There are so few people around that it feels like walking through a museum.

It is possible, of course, that it just wasn’t my lucky day. Just visited on off-days. Maybe on the on-days it’s noisy, packed, and there is dancing until the morning to seven accordions a day. But…I doubt it.

 

Sunday Market near the Molos Promenade

What They’re Saying Online: They write that this is a flea market. It is smaller than Fasuri, but also cool in its own way.

What It’s Really Like: Let’s take a step back. Back to the meaning of the word. According to online dictionaries, a “flea market” is a place where people buy and sell old, used, or simply useless items.

Based on this definition, yes, the expired food products that are sold here can be considered arbitrarily old (or even antique) and even used, and cheap Chinese consumer goods fit perfectly into the definition of “useless”, but that’s not it. This market is not a flea market at all; therefore, we will not pay any more attention to it.

 

Linoperta Flea Market

What They’re Saying Online: They write that it is popular among tourists. Open on Saturday.

What It’s Really Like: At the time this article was written, the market was under construction, and I was unable to visit it, but I had been numerous times before.

The market is loosely divided into two parts: in one, the smaller part, they sell vegetables and fruits, and in the other, bigger, part is the actual flea market. There are large collections of plates, old-fashioned clothing, antique electronics, porcelain, furniture, and even Nazi paraphernalia. Basically, there is something here to see. I’ve even come here a few times myself. Once I bought a pint for my father-in-law, and another time I bought my mother a little English figurine.

In general, the market is good and interesting. I recommend.

The Cyprus Flea Markets

Paphos

We’ve sorted through the close-by flea markets. Now let’s go a little further. As you probably noticed, there are no weekday flea markets in Cyprus at all. All work on weekends, some on Saturday, some on Sunday.

In Paphos and the surrounding area, I found three markets.

 

Flea Market in Timi

What They’re Saying Online: A small market open on Saturdays. Market trading is “diverse and attractive” (whatever that means).

What It’s Really Like: The village of Timi is located on the Limassol-Paphos Highway. It is here that there is an exit to the Paphos airport. Perhaps, this factor makes the village more popular and more visited than other surrounding towns.

Since the village is right on my way to Paphos, I drove here first.

Now on to the similarities and difference between Internet information and reality…

First of all, the market does not work on Saturdays, but on Sundays. If you drag yourself here from Limassol in the Saturday heat and see the sad faces of bored old people, drinking coffee alone in a roadside café, a few obscene words might come to mind.

Second of all, the market is, frankly, dull, and it will take you about ten minutes of strength to get all the way through it. Although, if you are a fan of Chinese “Gucci” and “Versace” — who knows…maybe this place will be able to captivate you, a true connoisseur, for a longer period of time.

The assortment of items here can basically be described as “what was not thrown into the garbage”. Mostly old, broken trash. But you can also find fruits, vegetables, zivania (a Cypriot pomace brandy), and traditional Cyprus bakery products. All of this is excellent, but it has nothing to do with a proper flea market.

Of course, it is great that the local community is so friendly and proactive enough to have organized a whole market in such a small village. It is commendable. However, in my personal opinion, going here specifically for the fruit, moonshine, and the results of the Chinese textile industry’s torment is a dubious idea. But if you are just driving by or on business — then why not? It’s atmospheric, after all.

 

Paphos Flea Market

What They’re Saying Online: Runs on Sundays. It is located behind the huge “Beauty Line” Shopping Centre. Other than that, they mostly write a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, à la ‘Captain Obvious’, like: you can only buy souvenirs at the market. Frankly speaking, a sensation.

What It’s Really Like: Alas, friends, no matter how hard I tried, I never found this “huge” Beauty Line Shopping Centre. Maybe I was just unlucky, and you’ll get lucky. But I wouldn’t bank on this landmark too much.

I did not find the Beauty Line, but did not despair. I kept going, wandering through the whole of Old Town, but still didn’t find anything. I ended up asking a local aksakal: “So where is this market of yours?”, to which I was I told that there is a flea market, but it doesn’t work on Sundays, but on Saturdays. An unpleasant surprise. I didn’t go the next Saturday, so, unfortunately, I can’t share more detailed information.

 

Duck Pond Market

What They’re Saying Online: In most reviews, this market is not even mentioned, and where it is mentioned, the description is pretty harsh. Something alone the lines of: “you can see vintage things”. Open on Sundays.

What It’s Really Like: Actually, friends, this is the coolest flea market here that I have seen!

The Duck Pond Market is in the village of Chloraka, in a place that can only be described as “a hole”. Despite not being in the best location, the people here are like herrings in a barrel; and, commendably, there are no parking problems.

The market is divided into two parts. One is located in the main pavilion, and the other is open-air.

The main feature of the market is in that it is British. Most sellers are English. The products are also English. A large percentage of buyers are also British. What I’m saying is that it’s almost as if I was somewhere on the outskirts of Liverpool. All that’s needed is to remove the palm trees in the background and turn down the temperature roughly twenty degrees. Then you can’t tell at all.

You can find just about anything here. Even if you don’t plan on buying anything, you should still come just to stand and stare. In my opinion, here they have all sorts of things for just about every taste, and not just some broken trash, but really interesting antiques.

In one of the corners of the pavilion there is a café, also managed by the British. Here you can eat hot dogs, hamburgers, or French fries. Everything is very cheap and delicious.

I definitely recommend!

The Cyprus Flea Markets

Larnaca

Well…we’ve gotten through the entire Western part of the island. Now let’s head east. Google only finds one flea market in Larnaca.

 

Larnaca open market

What They’re Saying Online: The main flea market of Larnaca. Open on Sundays.

What It’s Really Like: The first problem: all the Google navigator can do at my requests to find the Open Market of Larnaca is thoughtfully shrug. God bless Google Navigator. On some forums I found guidelines. Getting here on a Sunday, I once again ran into an unpleasant surprise: the market is not open on Sundays. I found a store with vintage goods nearby. A local seller said that he had never seen a flea market here. Well…I had to go home without huffing, and then come back the next week. But, alas, the next week I once again did not find any flea markets. There was a market, yes, but basically the trade was fruits and vegetables, and also a few different kinds of souvenirs. Namely junk and vintage, however, I did not find here. Given this, we will not pay any more attention to this market.

The Cyprus Flea Markets

Nicosia

Finally, the capital! There are two flea markets in the capital city — one in the city center, the other on the outskirts. Let’s take a look.

 

The Flea Market Opposite Holiday Inn

What They’re Saying Online: Open on Sundays. Nicosia’s main outlet (ooh-hoo!), here you can find absolutely everything!

What It’s Really Like: If we go off of the Buddhist philosophy and postulate that “everything is nothing”, then yes…I found everything here. Meaning…nothing.

The first difficulty was just finding the actual Holiday Inn. Google Navigator wasn’t familiar with such a hotel. But, as they say, Google is not all there is. My navigators and apps fussed a bit, and then voila!, TripAdvisor sees the hotel. Hallelujah. So I went. It’s Sunday morning. The platform outside the hotel does not give off a “flea market” vibe. No one is trading or selling. Locals say that there is a market here, but not a flea market, and certainly not on Sundays. Most of the passersby point somewhere to the east. As if what I need is there. I turned around, once again looked doubtfully at the Holiday Inn and at the platform nearby, as if expecting the clutter to dissipate and the veil to fall so that I would suddenly see the most important retail outlet in Cyprus’s capital. But nevertheless…I stumbled my way on over to where they sent me.

About ten minutes later, I entered the Air Market. I’m definitely not certain, but there is an assumption that everything on the Internet was about this market. Sure, it’s a stretch, but this place can be called a flea market, because they also sell secondhand clothes and kinds of worn figurines. But basically all the same Chinese consumer goods.

There are a few tents, and most of the market space is empty. Buyers unit. There is a sense of life only in the café at the entrance to the market. Here the akskals drink coffee, chat, play backgammon, and just observe the few buyers. If this is the main trading platform of the capital, then to put it mildly, it’s weak. Very weak.

 

Nicosia Flea Market

What They’re Saying Online: and here they write (ooh-hoo!)…900 square meters, ultra-modern pavilion where you can find anything. Wow…this delight is open on Sundays.

What It’s Really Like: The market is in some kind of remote nook on the border with the occupied territories. There are some industrial facilities around. No people, no cars. More precisely, several cars are still parked right at the entrance, but it is likely that these are the cars of the sellers themselves. And that’s it.

The “ultra-modern pavilion” in question is just some kind of ragged hangar that fits perfectly into the generally gouged industrial landscape. There was no desire to dive into it. Moreover, no sounds were coming from inside. But…what to do? I must tell you about all the flea markets in Cyprus…so here we go.

There were three rather long shopping rows in the pavilion. There were no sellers. Apparently, because there were no buyers. Then, after a while, I still found signs of life in the far corner.

Here, in a café, three elderly Greeks who were probably the only sellers in all of the three rows, were talking peacefully. One of them said that If I needed help, I can turn to him. Then he turned away and no one paid any more attention to me.

Though, despite the fact that the flea market is clearly not the most popular in Cyprus, it is still one of interest. The assortment of goods here is really large, and there are lots of interesting little things — ancient spinning bicycles, old photographs, hippie clothes, dishes, knives, utensils, and much, much more. Probably, the lack of buyers is to be associated with the market being in a location “on the settlements”. But be that as it may, I recommend this market.

The Cyprus Flea Markets

So, my friends, I managed to around to almost all of the flea markets of Cyprus (which can be found on the Internet). I have come to two conclusions:

The first, regarding the information that can be found on the Internet: it is often very unreliable. Often the work days and hours are confused, actual locations are confused, and some markets are mislabeled as flea markets, purely so that the article “holds more weight” with readers. If you are guided by the information that you can find, unpleasant surprises and wasted time are a guarantee. I hope this article will be useful to you and save you time and nerves.

The second conclusion, regarding the flea markets themselves: we can definitely say that in Cyprus there are very interesting and attention-worthy flea markets, where there is a place to take a walk around both for professional seekers and for just tourists who want to see something “like that”. And in the end, I would like to add my personal rating of the Cyprus flea markets. So let’s call them the Top 3 that, in my opinion, are must-sees.

1st Place — definitely Duck Pond Market. It is very interesting, atmospheric, and tasty.
2nd PlaceLinoperta Flea Market. Just an ordinary, but solid choice of a flea market.
3rd PlaceNicosia Flea Market. The market, sure, is not in the most convenient place. Plus the lack of buyers is a little confusing, but there is definitely place to roam.

Regarding the rest of the flea markets described in the article: in my opinion, they should be paid only the attention you’ve given them unto far. Of if you need to just “kill time” or “stop by”.

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