Kyrenia Revisited

We returned to Kyrenia overnight before going to the airport for our flight back to Turkey

The hotel rooms were in the form of little semi-detached bungalows around the pool

Here we are being welcomed by the Turkish Cypriot owner.

 

Ppalouze Festival

The Ppalouze festival (Grape festival) was held in the village of  Lofou

The village is up in the hills, but plenty of people seem to manage to find it.

It was held in the grounds of the village school ... yes, this grandiose building is indeed the village school.

As you can see, it was very popular.

There was plenty of entertainment from choirs ...

groups ..

and dancers.

There were also local artists and craftsmen showing their skills,

as well as the product the festival was named after, the ppalouze, which is a jelly-like substance made from grapes, some examples of which are hanging from the roof of this stall. In these strings of gel are various nuts.  If you were prepared to queue, there were some freebie tasters to be had.

The village itself was very picturesque ...

this a a little tavern (in the town)

 

 and one of the myriad of alleys to be explored

  

Omodos

On Friday we drove up into the hills to a restaurant for lunch.  

Here we were able to build up an appetite by swimming in their beautiful pool.

Now we were ready for the food 

after which we explored the village.

 

and as we mentioned, it was right up in the hills, with some magnificent views.

 

 

 

On the way back down, we passed through the village of Omodos, a real tourist magnet.

This lovely little street lined with mulberry trees was home to many restaurants, gift shops and the like. We took in the atmosphere by having a coffee in one of the establishments, expecting tourist prices, but were surprised when the bill came how reasonable the price of the very good coffee was.

Within the village there was also this monastery.

 

 

There was also a winery, with these old wine storage jars 

and this massive press

A stroll around the lanes revealed this very pretty restaurant .. 

and many more picturesque sights 

and finally, a very old Bedford, still in use along with three or four others.

Out and about

We were staying with our friends Charles and Janet on the Greek side of the island. They took us out and about a lot, for which we are very grateful. This is a village near their home which was destroyed by an earthquake. As it is on a fault line and more quakes are predicted at any time, it has been abandoned and a new village built a couple of kilometres away on the other side of the mountain where there is less chance of being affected by any seismic activity.

However, the church was rebuilt and is still being used.

They took us to a picnic site. At many Cypriot picnic sites, spring water is piped to the surface and made available to visitors. We collected a few bottles to use at home.
 

Kyrenia

We decided to take a little respite holiday in Cyprus just to relieve the pressures, stresses and strains of our lives in Turkey.We had kindly been invited by our friends Janet and Charles to stay with them in the village of Apesia in the south of the island. We arrived from Turkey at Ercan airport in the north. Before crossing the border we visited the little Northern Cypriot town of Girne (Kyrenia)

It's a pretty little beach resort with a harbour.

 

The return of the Lokma

The Sedef Patisserie van returned to Gaye 2 today. The driver and his assistant set up their little kitchen and proceeded to produce the little round honeyed doughnut balls known as Lokma here. 

In no time at all they had produced heaps of them which was just as well as word had got round and quite a queue had built up.

 They GAVE AWAY many, many boxes such as the one pictured below.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm