Saturday February 4, 2006 – Bout of Heaves

We rented a car again this weekend and joined by Kane headed northwest along windy narrow roads to the pine covered Troodos mountains (about an hour away). The Troodos are known for small unassuming stone churches peppered throughout the region which contain Byzantine religious art and Christian frescoes recognized as UNESCO World Heritage sites. The first church on the day’s pilgrimage, after a stop at a small hilltop town (Omodos), was Archangelos Michael.

One of the more interesting parts of visiting these churches (besides being what look like barns from the outside, but containing beautiful paintings on the inside) is the method of sharing them with the tourists. Keys are held by local caretakers who post their phone number at the church – in our case a yellow Post-it on the door. We called the phone number and five minutes later a black clad Cypriot grandmother came huffing and puffing up the cobbled hill with a key. Inside the walls of small dimly lit church were covered with frescoes from 1474.

The next stop was a peaceful tucked away 900 year old monastery (Kykkos) housing an impressive collection of Greek Orthodox paintings, religious pieces, and other knick knacks. Our oasis from the pilgrimming was a stuff your face feast of a lunch at an unnamed village restaurant. There were no menus, but a teenage boy explained the selection of items on hand and we ordered a bounty of pretty much everything the kitchen had available. The food just kept coming. Looking past the lukewarm-ness, the meal was excellent except for the house specialty of what tasted like 3 day wine “better designate a driver” marinated heavily marbled pork. Although tempted by the musty marinade, "C" refrained and focused her efforts on our mountain of potatoes as we all had to “sack up” in the human garbage disposal duties in order to not disappoint our teenage waiter.

Along our continued driving adventure on an unimproved, steeply graded, rocky, dusty road in search of painted churches (Panagia and Agios Ioannis Lampadistis), we were accosted by two smiling old ladies. When we pulled near them, they trotted toward the car with a bowl and unloaded a handful of this Cypriot version of trail mix (grains, nuts, pomegranate…). We choked back laughter of the shear oddness of the situation, said our thank yous, and moving on roaring in laughter (you really had to be there). As dusk was approaching, we somehow made a bit of a wrong turn and 15 minutes later found ourselves on the summit of Mount Olympus, the highest point on Cyprus (1,951 meters).

Upon pulling into the historic core of Limassol for a cappuccino stop there were streams of people intently walking the streets. We joined the walk thinking we had solved the elusive mystery of what Cypriots do on the weekends (literally you do not see a Cypriot walking the streets from roughly two-ish Saturday after through Monday morning). It ended up being a welcome home parade, speeches, and fireworks for Marcos Baghdatis. We were able to see the legend from afar, whom by the way is still on the front pages of the papers here.

Although "C" and I were still gorged from lunch, Kane was hankering to try dinner at “Tokyo Japanese Tepenjaki (as spelled on my receipt)” restaurant. By the way, this is one of the few Asian restaurants in Cyprus which does not claim to be a “Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Filipino” restaurant. Our low-set standard bar was met after our waiter following questioning by Kane diplomatically stated, “Well it won’t look exactly like the photo in the menu.” Luckily only an eight piece meal was ordered as we were served sushi of dubious quality and origin (the dyed fish on one roll matched the hue of the bright pink canned ginger). Considering our “sushi” and “pork” consumption today, fortunately morning came for all of us without a bout of heaves.