Once again its the famous Limassol Wine Festival , the festival has been an anual event since 1961 , and was only not held during the period of unrest during the cicvil wars that occurred on the Island in they years 64 and 74 .
its a wonderful event and has much to offer both locals and tourists to the island alike.
It seems there is always food at any special event here in Cyprus and the wine festival is one of the best events to sample almost every traditional kind of food available and inside the grounds of the central Public Gardens many local restaurant and cafes owners set up tables and chairs or just serve smaller dishes from stands along the walkways around the grounds to cater to the fancy of all the people , which are many and can see in one night alone 15,000 visitors.
This year I went along with my cousin Sharon and her daughter Andrea , they have been before and liked it so much that they asked me to go along again with them , it was the first night of their holidays and actually the last night of the festival which had already been on a full week, so it was their last chance ,so off we went , we bought some of the wine glasses at the entrance and proceeded to the first local wine comapny to test the varieties they had , there must be 5-6 that are set up and all of them offering such a wide selection of differnt types , well I am preferring dry red wine , but found some nice Rose ones too , Andrea really liked the sweet white ones , Sharon being a diabetic was restricted to just a few sips , but siad she liked the white also , we all tried the Commandaria which is really sweet and is more like a sweet Sherry , that particular wine is used as the communion wine in the churches here and is quite often given after a meal here in Cyprus .
after testing the wine we followed the wonderful aroma of the local 'souvlaki ' kebabs being grilled on the charcoals and found ourselves a nice table to rest and eat, oh the food was so good, well we had pepsi with that as being the driver home after I had to take care ,
After finishing our meal we started to stroll around and look at various little shows and displays that were taking place, they have some short plays and also some traditional dancing and singing , one dancer realy caught our eye , he was in a huge barrel actually dancing and treading on the grapes ! and yes Andrea and myself maybe feeling a little happy form the samples of wine we had ,decided to go and get in the barrel and join him ( :
it was a fun night and really we had a great time , so did a lot of others and some of them I think had really been doing the rounds of the free samples more than once and saw some some of the tourists who could hardly walk in a straight line ! there is a water display near the entrance and over the week I think more than one person had fallen inside it , luckily its not so deep and there is always someone there to pull them out ,pity I didnt catch a few of them on camera.
There is a very nice web site to read more about the history and traditions of this event which I will post here below,
http://www.limassolmunicipal.com.cy/wine/4.html
anyone getting the chance to go there to the festival in future years shouldnt miss it, get your glass raise it and say ' stin ygia sas ' which translated is all the best to your health
