Sunday, March 19, Long weekend in London (part 2)

Tea at the Ritz, walk along the Millenium Bridge, and "We Will Rock You" Queen musical.

Saturday, March 18 - Long Weekend in London (part 1)

Details of our trip to be updated - just wanted to get these photos up and will edit later.

Friday, March 17th - Happy St. Patrick's Day
We spent St. Patrick's in a smokey Irish pub in London on Portobello Road. The crowd was a wonderful mix of young and old, some professional's just finished with work and retired people who seemed to be regulars, but all were there to have fun.









We learned about the "baby Guiness" shot - kalhua with a bit of Bailey's at the top.

Thursday March 9, 2006 – Sweet Biscuits

My purchase today of Romany Creams – “Crunchy Choc Coconut Biscuits” reminded me of my first delve into baking in Cyprus a week and a half ago. Being the football watching, mechanic, tough guy that I am, I had been holding back a desire to bake cookies for way too long. Since all my recipes are in “American,” I had to get creative in calculating my measurements. Early on in this Cyprus adventure, I determined that one of our small glasses could serve as my measuring cup. After eyeballing a Coke can, filling it with water, converting it to cups, taking the square root of the cubed polynomial, pouring it into my glass…long story short the glass is pretty darn close to a “cup” for baking purposes. Armed with my trusty Betty Crocker cookbook, my glass cup, an eyeball for the teaspoon/tablespoon measurements, and the ingredients I mustered together (resorting to chopping up two semi-sweet chocolate bars since Cyprus chocolate chips are “shite”), I began the process of ball parking chocolate chip cookies using my less than precise measurements. Seeing as I would practically sell my soul for a bag of shredded coconut, I tossed a hearty portion in at the last minute. At this point I began to miss an electric mixer, but I put my back into it and pressed on with my dinner fork. Eleven minutes of baking later, I determined that I had a pretty good batch of cookies on my hands.

Seeing that it was Kane’s last day in the office and I had to swing by the office anyways, I decided to drop off a couple dozen along with a small container of milk. Little did I know that that one cookie incident would spread like wildfire. That evening the “Cast of Characters” invited me out to dinner (this was when "C" was stateside) and kept going on and on about how they gorged themselves on the fabulous “biscuits.” The next day I ran into Nichos’ (partner) wife at the store and she said how he “couldn’t stop talking about the sweet biscuits you made.” She insisted on getting the recipe, because apparently the brownies she makes occasionally don’t demand that acclaim. When "C" was picked up from the airport by the taxi driver (used often by the firm), he began telling her how he heard that “your husband made some wonderful sweet biscuits…” So needless to say, this whole cookie/sweet biscuit (apparently “cookie” is an American word) got a bit out of hand.

Monday March 6, 2006 – Country Roads Take Me Home…

After "C's" halfway around the world blitz crossing eleven time zones, she was ready for a lazy Cyprus long weekend. Monday was Green Monday, a “day off” holiday for Greece and Cyprus. Knowing that normal weekends are dead in Cyprus in general, we were proactive and

secured our lovely smoky tape decked Rennault Meganne with 78,000 km for the three days. After unloading about a half a bottle of the Cypriot version of Febreeze, were off and on our way for a Saturday afternoon of exploring. Our travels took us eastbound an hour to the city (term used loosely) of Larnaca, home of Cyprus’ international airport. It actually had a relatively nice port area in which we porked out on typical Cypriot meze dinner. We rolled into our apartment about midnight and polished off the movie “Lawrence of Arabia” in an attempt to make progress on our laundry list of required movies. It is a fabulous movie for those of you who’ve never seen it or slept through it in your youth. It was even a bit more interesting being so close to “Arabia” for us. We hope to be trotting around on a camel in the desert one of these days.

A lazy Sunday morning was followed by a lazy Sunday drive up into the mountains for a hike up to Kaledonia Falls – Cyprus’ famous scrawny waterfall. The hike followed a creek up through a small canyon reminiscent of a California landscape. We continued past Kaledonia Falls on a well marked trail until the clouds started to look a bit too ominous. Although short, the 5 km hike was a refreshing change from the dry coastal plains. We followed what was supposed to be an “improved secondary road,” which was more of a rocky dirt road through backcountry villages, goats, and blossoming fruit trees on our way to our favorite city in Cyprus, Paphos, for a sunset and dinner. What we like about Paphos, is that it has one somewhat dedicated (a street or two) area of “charming. Both desiring a change
from the hearty meaty flavorful meze, after three plus months without it, our Indian feast was fabulous.

After arriving back into Limassol, we dropped back into the final night of Limassol’s “well known across the island” Carnival celebration. Carnival ended up being a crowd of Cypriots crammed in an area near the castle (more of a sturdy square block of a building) with music blaring from two giant speakers. We stayed for about a half an hour, soaking in the experience, until we found a guy selling “hot” dvd’s. We gave Brokeback Mountain and The New World a new home on our squeaky TV cart. In my brief experiences of Limassol “events,” they never seem to get even close to expectations, like the street fairs in New York City. You always have high hopes in a New York City Street Fair being some sort of magical event, but turns out to be more of a swap meet with county fair food.

On Monday, after a low key morning, our little workhorse was subjected to another day of dusty backroads. The highlight of the day was stumbling upon two old Venetian bridges tucked away in a “Lord of the Rings” type forest. Continuing with our international feast theme, we basked in the glory of M.S.G. at a Chinese restaurant in Paphos.

Saturday February 25, 2005 – The Bachelor

"C" was stateside these past few days to participate in the bachelorette/wedding festivities for our friend Traci. Since “Uncle PwC’s” generosity only goes so far coupled with the shell shock of purchasing a ticket to fly home ($2,000), the decision easy to remain a bachelor in Cyprus was relatively easy. I had a "boys" weekend joining up with Kang and another guy (Steve), whom is yet another “new addition to the Cast of Characters.” He is from England, of course works for PwC, lives in N.Y.C., and is here for a couple weeks. Steve rented a convertible Renault for the weekend so the three of us went cruising around the south west coast of the Island. Upon seeing a car that was both a convertible and an unheard of automatic transmission after a month and a half of “what’s the cheapest you have” rental cars, Kane and I were star struck. Steve, a Quadruple Platinum diamond with two gold stars and an elite cherry on top member of British Airways, Hertz, Budget, Hilton…and work-a-holics anonymous for that matter, quickly put things in perspective because last week he rented a Jaguar. Regardless, Kane and I happily squeezed in and we visited some of the historical spots which Steve, being his first time in Cyprus when he had a weekend where he wasn't working, hadn't seen before. It was a “rerun” for me (same spots we stopped at during our first weekend here), but it was really a fun time.

At a tourist lookout point along the way we came across this camper that had been attached to a big truck chassis - making a big 4x4 looking camper conversion. I struck up a conversation with the German owner (guy in his mid-fifties I'd guess) and he and his wife sold their home, deposited the money in the bank, he built the meaty camper, and for the past year they have been driving around Asia and Far East Europe (China, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal, Russia, All the "Stans" (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, etc.), Iran, through Turkey, before boarding a ship into Cyprus. Granted "living" in that camper contraption for a year through monsoons, sand storms, bumpy dusty roads, would lead to a serious case of cabin fever. You think after at least 6 months you'd be "OK, seriously I need a real *%#@+#% bed and shower." The wife who was in the passenger seat (window up) the whole time while we were chatting outside looked as though she might be at that point. They're heading towards home (Hamburg) now to visit their grown daughters for a month or so before boarding the camper on a ship to South America where they will spend a year before driving up to North America for another year. I asked the guy if he was keeping a journal or anything; he said “that it was all in his mind.” Hopefully he's keeping notes somewhere because that is one heck of a journey. He said it had been an amazing trip so far, with the most beautiful place being Kyrgyzstan of all places. He hadn't had in problems along the way besides some minor camper repairs - he's a mechanic which would seem to be a requirement for that kind of adventure. I can picture going into some mechanic in Iran for a flat tire, suffering a language barrier, and coming out $3,000 down with a new “flux capacitor”, rustproofing and undercoating.

Steve is a huge rugby fan and he had to see the England/Scotland Eurocup match. We went to this very British sports pub/restaurant full of British fans and had dinner (fish and chips) and watched the game. That sport is nuts, but extremely entertaining to watch once you have a handle on the game. I was like an annoying confused girlfriend asking the rules the whole time (“what just happened,” “why does he have the ball,” “why was there a penalty…”) but we had a great time and I learned quite a bit about the game of rugby. Those guys really get the crap kicked out of them. There are "blood" substitutions so guys can get stitched up and run back in. Before the game, the announcer's were talking about some player on another team that got his two front teeth knocked out in a game last week, went to the hospital, got them rammed back in, and he was back playing in the same game. Just insane…American footballers really are a bunch of ninnies.

Five Caffrey’s Ales later (= two cokes for me), our threesome wandered back to Steve’s hotel bar overlooking the sea to top them off with three gin and tonics (= two sparkling waters for me). The conversation shifted to movies (as Steve is a HUGE cinema fan), and Kane and I were a disappointment in our lack of breadth. Over the next couple hours, through laughs and entertaining stories of Steve’s youth (on the wrong side of the tracks), a hearty homework assignment of movies was compiled. In case you are interested, here’s the "much watch movie " list Steve assigned me (the * indicates watch immediately). Mind you this wasn’t a complete list, but one thrown together late in the evening through a gin/beer/sparkling water and coke haze.

Bonnie and Clyde, The Girl in the Café*, Layer Cake, Snatch, Lock Stock and a Smoking Barrel*, Leon / The Professional, Italian Job, Taking of Pelam 123, Seven Samuri*, The Green Mile, Taxi, Great Escape*, One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest*, Coyote Ugly, The Cooler, Oceans 11 (Original), Guns of Navaroon, Where Eagles Dare, Friday Night Lights, Radio, The Icestorm*, Citizen Kane, Raging Bull, True Romance*, Steve McQueen Movies in General, Cold Mountain, Girl in a Cake, The Inside Man, Syriana, Kingdom of Heaven, Blues Brothers, Boondock Saints*, The Blade Movies, Underworld, Saw and Saw II*, Remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Cape Fear, Point Break, Blow, Secret Window, Hotel Rwanda, Hero, Deep Impact, Fight Club, Abyss (uncut), The Commitments, Mr. Holland's Opus, Shine, About a Boy, Love Actually*, Crash*, Phonebooth, Awakenings*, The Sting, Kalifornia, 3 Kings, Boiler Room, The Swimming Pool, Little Voice, Brain Damage (and Prequel)*, Around the World in 80 Days (Original), Raise the Red Lantern