Rent a Car in Kyrenia: Parking, Hills and the Streets to Avoid

Kyrenia is not a difficult place to drive. It is a difficult place to park, which is a different problem and one nobody warns you about until you are nosing a hire car down a lane built for a donkey cart with a queue forming behind you.

For the wider picture of the town — attractions, drive times, why a car matters here — see our guide to car rental in Kyrenia. So here is the specific, local version of what you need to know when you rent a car in Kyrenia — the sort of thing you would learn in your third visit rather than your first.

Do not drive into the harbour

This is the one. The lanes around the old harbour are narrow, one-way in places, and packed with pedestrians who are not expecting you. In July and August they are effectively impassable by early evening.

Park back from the harbour and walk down. There is paid parking a few minutes away and free street parking a little further back. The walk is short, downhill on the way there, and infinitely faster than the alternative. Locals do this. Visitors try to drive in once, and then do it too.

Where to actually leave the car

• The ring road and the streets above it — free, plentiful, five to ten minutes on foot from the harbour.
• Paid car parks near the centre — cheap and worth it in high season if you want to stop circling.
• Your hotel or villa — most have parking; ask at booking, because the ones in the old town sometimes do not.
• Anywhere shaded, in summer. Not a rule, just advice. A dark interior at 2pm in August is genuinely unpleasant.

The hills are steeper than they photograph

Three of the best drives on the island start in Kyrenia and go up. St Hilarion Castle is twenty minutes of climbing switchbacks. Bellapais is a shorter but sharper haul up through the village. The villages behind town — Çatalköy, Ozanköy, Karaman — involve steep, narrow lanes with blind bends and the occasional goat.

None of this is dangerous. All of it is easier in an automatic. If you are not used to hill starts on a manual while also concentrating on driving on the left, this is the single upgrade worth paying for when you arrange car hire in Kyrenia. On the descents, use a low gear rather than riding the brakes — the drop from St Hilarion is long enough to overheat them otherwise.

Which car suits Kyrenia

• Economy — the right answer for most couples. In a town this tight, small is an advantage, not a compromise.
• Standard or family — better for four people plus luggage on the mountain pass from Ercan.
• SUV — only if you are heading up to the hill villages regularly, or continuing east toward Esentepe and Karpaz.
• Automatic — see above. In Kyrenia specifically, worth it.

Free delivery, wherever you are staying

We deliver rental cars free of charge anywhere in Kyrenia and the villages around it — the coast road hotels, apartments in the centre, villas up in Çatalköy, Ozanköy and Bellapais. Give us an address and a time.

Most people arriving by air take the car at Ercan instead and drive over, which takes about half an hour and means the holiday starts at the terminal rather than at reception. Delivery and collection at the airport are free as well.

Worth the drive, once you have the keys

• St Hilarion Castle — 20 minutes up. Go early; there is no shade in the ruins.
• Bellapais Abbey — 15 minutes. Lunch under the tree Lawrence Durrell wrote about.
• Alagadi (Turtle) Beach — 25 minutes east. Green turtles nest here between May and October.
• Esentepe and the golf coast — 40 minutes east on a fast, easy road.
• Nicosia — 30 minutes south over the pass, for the walled capital and the Selimiye Mosque.

Every one of those is a short drive and a genuinely poor bus journey. That gap is the whole argument for renting a car in Girne.