It has been a while since I have had the time and peace of mind to sit and write a blog. For the first week of the month I had my dear friend T here, she had flown all the way from Bermuda to spend 5 days with us. I felt very honoured. We have known each other since we were 12 years old. We were frineds at school and her Mum used to own a hairdressing salon in Bristol. I used to have sleep overs at her house and on a Saturday we would go with her mother to the salon and help sweep floors and serve coffee. We were probably more of a hindrance than a help but it was there in my young teenege years that I discovered my passion for hairdressing. T and I went to different salons to do our apprenticship and since then even though our lives have taken us in very different directions, we have always kept in touch and our lives remained somewhat paralell in many ways and she too is now about to make a big change in her life and is looking to leave the place she has been in for 16 years and move to Europe. We whized her around the island, and this begun in Nicosia for lunch, when we met with her family who came over from Kyrenia.
What a hoot that was. They were staying in a hotel over there, they got a taxi to the border, and texted to say they were there. In the meantime we are still at least 45 mins drive away from them in Larnaca. We rushed up the motorway, got stuck in traffic, got lost trying to find the Ledra Palace border crossing, which I thought was the only border crossing in Nicosia. When we finally reached the border, we parked the car as you are not allowed to take hire cars across as they are not insured in the North, and then we made our way to the police post and got our piece of paper stamped to allow us into Northern Cyprus. Ok ... where are the family then???? We are desperatley texting but getting no response, then finally we get a phone call, their credit had run out, hence no reply to the text, so they had borrowed someones phone to call us to say that they have already crossed over to the South, 'where we say as we cannot see you????' 'at the Lidras street crossing' they respond................................ it transpires that there are two crossings in Nicosia, one at Ledra Palace and one at Lidras Street, ( both pronounced very similar)we were at the wrong one AHHHHHHHHHH. So we hop into a taxi and drive to the other one, que up at the police post and get stamped out of the North and enter back into Southern Cyprus, mindlessly passing her uncle on the way.......... phew there, on the other side at the end of the entry que is a lady looking rather hot and stressed whith her friend under an umbrella in the midday heat of summer in Nicosia. It was her Aunt! Finally reunited after 6 years, we enjoyed a wonderful lunch over looking the city and the mountains of the North. That was my introduction to border crossing in Cyprus.
We showed T lots of other places too and in all, I think she had an enjoyable time before flying to Malta to check that out possibilities there for her future. Good luck T.
Since here visit there has been much to do around the house, the usual cleaning and tidying of the garden. TBH spent one Saturday cutting back palm leafs and neatening up teh bouganvillia along the back wall. The veggie box is not doing much at the moment. The meelies are coming through but no cucumbers and no tomatos yet, I am begining to loos faith, but keep watering anyway in the hope that at some point we will get fruit for our labour.
my green wheels
On Saturday we drove to Paphos to collect a second hand bike that I managed to find on anglo info Cyprus. So ha ha.. I finally have wheels again, and they are green, not in colour but echo friendly,all be it that I have to use my own energy to rotate them and when I tried that on Saturday evening when we returned home after a very lovely relaxed lunch at Pissouri Bay, well I didn't get very far.................................. it has been a long time since I rode a bike and I think it will take some practice.
Swallows on the wire outside the house.
The swallows appear to have moved and the Bee Eaters are back hovering over the ridge at sunset catching insects on the wing. I thought that this change in birdlife would have coensided with a change of weather and that the cooler nights were going to start setting in, but no such luck, it is still very hot and very humid. Tired of it now.
Bee Eater on the wire.
The next few weeks will be busy too, we have guests coming for lunch tomorrow, and TBH'S ( the better half) parents will soon be with us for a few weeks. So I am once again frantically cleaning, the fridge was done this morning, with teh mopping of the patio this afternoons task.
During this time we also have some friends from Aussie arriving on the island whom we hope to catch up with on a couple of ocassions and we have a 50th birthday party to attend in the village.
Who said life in Cyprus would be quiet?
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