Aphrodite's Island

We stood in the bright morning sun looking down at the frothy white waves in the marine green-blue sea at the rocky point (Petra Tou Romiou) where Aphrodite is said to have emerged.

Legend has it that if you swim around it seven times eternal youth and beauty will be gained.
This is tempting until you hear it has to be naked in the full moon. The island's cultural heritage is more easily accessible. We were en route to one of the most revered archaeological sites in the region, five minutes from Paphos.
Here the ruins of its ancient city, Nea Paphos, is a huge archaeological site which includes a Roman villa with stunning mosaic floors, the intricately tiled House of Dionysos. Dating from the third century, when pagan religion co-existed with Christianity in Cyprus, you find stories of gods alongside symbols of Christ.

The current archaeological sites are being slowly excavated, as it is believed that there are still many treasures yet to be discovered.

Afterwards we walked along the touristy main boardwalk in Paphos to a narrower harbourside street filled with open air fish restaurants.

Here we sat by the waterside at Kastro restaurant for a lunchtime, guilt-inducing mezze. The multi-course meal is so large you know even before it is carried out of the kitchen that you cannot manage to eat it all. Bread, tarasamalata, dolmades followed by a large whole fish (each) with potatoes, more bread and salad.

Lazily, we retreated to our hotel, the five-star InterContinental Aphrodite Hills resort.

Styled like a Mediterranean village with villa-style rooms and apartments set around a central pool, the resort is set on a plateau in 578 acres straddling the Randidi Gorge overlooking the Med.

The public spaces are cool and plant-filled while pool-facing rooms fuse deep Mediterranean colours such as oranges, reds and golds with more generic vast marble bathrooms. The rooms are quite small, the bathrooms very big — wouldn't this be better the other way around?

We ate in different restaurants each night — freshly caught sea bass by the poolside at Ithaki Taverna, a vast buffet of salads, seafood, cheeses and deserts at Eleonas.

Then it was my turn to cook in the form of a lesson with executive chef Stephanos Chrysanthou, head of Mesogios restaurant.

Chefs can be a little daunting but Stephanos proved charming and down to earth. He taught us how to filet a fish, then cook it covered in a kind of salty meringue you dispose of to reveal
perfect, moist fish. Olive oil, vegetables, herbs: Chrysanthou is a proud exponent of the Mediterranean diet. A bonus was my fellow student, a German actress called Anne-Sophie Briest, who I wrongly feared would be a diva but came to really like (with a good line in gossip on Hollywood stars such as Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow).