Cyprus

Entry written on Thursday - not able to be posted until 10:38PM Friday (Egypt Time)


It’s 7:30 AM here at sea. Yesterday, we visited Cyprus and today we are cruising toward Alexandria, Egypt. A day at sea used to be quite enjoyable for us – laying in the sun by the pool, attending lectures or playing bingo. With Josie, these things are impossible – she is such an inquisitive and active girl… we spend our days answering her questions and trying to meet her demands. She loves being at the pool and knows most of the kids her age that swim in the shallow end.

Cyprus was very interesting. It is a very unique island with beautiful beaches, an arid interior toward the North and East and beautiful, lush forests on the Western edge. Of course, this island has been separated since 1974. The Turks rule North Cyprus and the Greeks rule the Southern portion. The island is at peace though.

Our intent was to rent a car and tour the island. Hertz quoted a reasonable rate on the Internet for a 1-day rental in Cyprus. But, when we arrived we found that they do not permit one-day rentals…Huh?

We ended up hiring a taxi for a 3-hour tour. (beginning to sound familiar?!) I had done a bit of research and knew that we wanted to visit a few monasteries, a beach and some lace producing villages. Our driver, Nick, seemed amazed that I knew what highways I wanted to take and exactly what villages to visit.

Turns out that first ‘monastery’ we visited was actually what we in the States would call a ‘convent’. It was inhabited by nuns covered head to toe in black with nary a monk in sight. We visited the ornately decorated chapel, bought a jar of their ‘monastery-produced’ orange marmalade and we were on our way to the next village.

We visited the village of Leftkara, famous for making lace from a design drawn by Leonardo Di Vinci when he visited the island The workmanship is amazing – it takes 6-8 women nearly 6 months to complete a standard sized tablecloth. The prices reflect this labor- intensive effort. The first tablecloth I was shown was exquisite – I asked, “How much? The answer? “1,400. I didn’t even bother to ask what currency she was quoting.

We continued to look around and I did find a set of silver embroidered wine glasses – hard to explain, but I will post a photo of them once I reach a destination with decent bandwidth. I have never seen anything like them. As any friend of mine will tell you, I am NOT a collector. I don’t have knick-knacks. But, these glasses were such things of beauty that even James said, “Get them”.

We left that village and headed for the coast – Nick had recommended a seaside fish restaurant for lunch where the girls could also go for a swim. Nick and Mario (the owner of the restaurant) are old buddies and both promised us a meal that would never be forgotten. A half hour later, our table was crowded with salad, olives, bread, tsaski sauce, grilled fish, fried calamari and a few more things I didn’t know the name of - but tasted great! Nick joined us for our meal and everyone left the table full and happy.

Josie was getting a bit cranky so we decided to head back to town. Nick had been our guide for about 5 hours and quoted us a fair price for the day. Nick’s quote had been in EUROS. It was not until we were headed home that we realized our purchases in Leftkara had been in CYPRIOT POUNDS. We are not careless people, especially when it comes to money. But I believe we were screwed. No matter how well you negotiate, (and we’ve gotten pretty good at it) there’s no getting around the fact that the Cypriot pound costs roughly $2. So, if your receipt says 100 pounds , your credit card statement will say $200. We had the euros down cold but were totally ignorant of the lousy exchange rate in Cyprus. This made Cyprus our most expensive stop. We’re pretty sure that we won’t have any big purchases during our remaining stops, so we’ll be hyper-vigilant from here on in.

We’re all very excited to be going to Egypt tomorrow. It’s the highlight of our trip The internet service on board is terrible. They seem to have serious bandwidth issues. There are lots of complaints. As an example: last night when I posted my blog entry – I had composed it off line on Word, copied and just pasted the entry onto the Blogger template for New Posts. It took a total of 28 minutes to do so – at the cost of 33 cents per minute.
Yikes!!

I’ll try to get some photos up soon, but I’m not confident that I’ll have the connection to do so. I’ll update once we leave Egypt!