Holiday Truths Forum

Yes, Ledra Street (the main pedestrianised shopping street in Nicosia) is the foot crossing point into the north.

You can park your car in the nearby multi-storey car park.

Drive into Nicosia and keep going until you hit a road where you have to turn left (straight on is a No Entry) as you will meet the exiting city traffic.

Turn left and a little further along you will need to take the right bearing road (you will see the start of the city walls as you turn to the right) and then get into the left lane.
Stay on this road until you see the bus station on your left side (or there is parking below the bus station) - Turn left and drive through the bus station until you come to a very odd little junction/mini-roundabout.
The road you need to take is as straight on as you will get it although it's a bit of a dogleg and goes downhill slightly and is quite narrow at this point.
Keep on going until you see the P for parking sign pointing to the right and then again (just by a white building on a very narrow street) you will see another sign to the left.
The car park is about 50yds along on your right side.
Exit the car park on foot through the small shopping mall (you will smell the Cinnabon franchise and MacDonalds) and then turn left into Ledra Street.
You will find the crossing point is about 100yds along or you may want to take a look at Debenhams (observation floor/museum) which will be to your right.

Thanks for the detailed reply, thats perfect I have been up to the top of Debenhams before (if it used to be called the Woolworths tower?)

Can spend a few hours in Nicosia as well as crossing the border

Yes, that's correct - it was Woolworths quite a number of years ago but Debenhams took all the old Woolworths stores about 3 or 4 years back.

We pop through Ledra Street now more often than we take our own vehicle through, especially since they put the insurance cost up. We have a Mazda double cab/pickup truck and last time we took it through by the racecourse at Ayios Dometios it was around 50 EUR.

If you're going through Ledra Street don't forget to pop in and have a mooch around Buyuk Han (previously an Ottoman travellers inn) or you may find a series of posts I put on my personal blog of photos taken during the Kataklysmos public holiday in June this year of interest. This link will take you to them and some short video footage of Buyuk Han:
http://cypruslifeinpictures.wordpress.com/tag/nicosia/

I had a look at the video and realised I have been there, sat and had a beer. Will definately return, we are over for three weeks this time so plenty of time to explore, looks like we will need more than a couple of hours, might spend a day exploring

We spent one night in Kyrenia last September and stayed at the British Hotel, which was good value for money and just one street back from the harbour. As we had a high floor room we had harbour views so that was all good.

However, directly in front of us and immediately on the harbour front is the White Pearl Hotel and that was only a few Euros more than we paid. If we went back, we would stay there next time as it's fairly quiet along the harbour front of an evening.

Of course, I blogged it: http://wp.me/p1uja5-SD

Thanks, very interesting and informative. I just have one more question, what currency will we need for northern Cyprus, I cant remember what we used last time?

They will take TL and EUR plus most likely GBP too so you can do whatever you want really.

If you will already have EUR with you then you don't necessarily have to change it to TL but make a quick check in one of the currency exchanges what the current rate is. Generally, in the shops and cafes they work on 2 to 1 so roughly half the cost in TL to get the EUR equivalent.

great review but why all the symbols?

They're not symbols entered by the person who made the post deliberately, it's where the forum coding doesn't recognise that particular character. Sometimes, forum coding doesn't allow the EUR (€) or GBP (£) to be entered correctly or even some letters with accents etc...

thankyou cyprus100