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.