Louis Hotel - Louis Princess Beach Larnaca

... I heard a thu-thunk, thu-thunk noise that kept repeating itself. I began to smell ink and there it was...an old ink printing press from about another lifetime. Remember in elementary school (if you are old enough) when teachers ran dittos off on that blue ink machine and the pages were damp and had a chemical reek? This is exactly what I found here and I was transported back a few decades in an instant.

A blue line painted down sidewalks ...

... had been too small. First of all, different airline from this one and I could tell from the agent's bored look she really didn't give a flip that Ms. Ginormous spent 10 hours wedged into a coach seat. I took a discrete picture of her for your viewing so you tell me if the seat being too small was just a figment of her ample imagination.

When she hoisted her 300 pound plus body of size out of the chair to go to the bathroom some kids took that ...

... of a National Enquirer at Publix because fringe kooks don't want the other 99% of us to live our lives. I am kinda partial to the European way of just letting it all hang out in the open. If you want to look, go for it. If not, look away and shut up. Amazing that in 20 years Bulgaria has opened up and we continue to go backwards.

And after leaving Billa, turn right and next door is a tiny storefront selling the latest in cheap ...

All packing and cleaning is underway !!! Only 36 or so hours left before we hit the tarmac at Larnaca !! Just need to get the dog wormed and de-flead (not that he has them !), groomed and then buy him a travel box for the flight !

Fingers crossed all our accommodation arrangements have been made for Athens and Samothraki !

... fort ended with us parking the car and eating lunch...a mere
100 yards from the castle. From Larnaka we headed back towards
Limassol in order to visit Ancient Amathous and Kourion. Kourion,
although at the end of the journey, was perhaps my favourite. Here I
saw the ruins of the temple to Apollo as the sun was going down. It ...

... us. He struggled with his
limited English but made the most valiant effort. He simply was
trying to tell us that the troubles between Christians and Muslims
and Jews and everyone should not be. That this minor difference of
religion should not be causing so much trouble, so much difficulty
amongst the people of the world. He was a very nice man and it was
an unforgettable experience.

After a day of driving and walking
around it was an early night.

... go at cutting a chunk out of the patio, in which he was going to plant a shrub. Well, needless to say, he hadn't quite joined the ends when the power tool blatantly attacked him! The saw took a big chunk out of his arm; luckily a kind neighbour whisked him off to the local hospital where they managed to sew him up. Mary was with a friend at the time visiting Northern Cyprus so was not around to assist. She had only had time to drop off her shopping ...

... is certainly a great place to vacation in the early fall. Late October and early November was still quite warm to our standards, but the tourist season was over for Eurpeans so it was a good place to vacation as it was moderately priced.

... paint a dreary vision of the country -- I'm hoping that we will see a more hopeful vision and something else besides this issue in the next few days. Tonight we will be going to Northern Cyprus (the Turkish Cypriot side) for dinner. We have to use our passports to cross over. This seems so strange since technically the north is part of the Cypriot country. Kyrenia, where we will be having dinner, is located on the coast, while Nicosia is more inland. Here are some photos. Later . . .

Yassas! (Hello) Another hot day in Cyprus. It's our last day here and we're in Larnaca before we fly out to Vienna later this afternoon. We've been to see all of the old archeological sites around the place, it's hard to imagine some of this stuff is near 1500 years old or older. The closest thing to that in New Zealand would only date around 200 years (for some of the British stuff and maybe 400 for some of the Maori stuff). I've been up ...