they sank their own ship before the enemy's arrival.
cyprus picture-mania the first.
including travel, from july 5-10th (before we went to israel)
picture glory and stories within.
>>
this is the view from our hotel room balcony on my first morning in Limassol, Cyprus. the Hawaii Grand ho-tel. and i decided to put something pretty before my actual first picture from the trip...
these are the friends in my seat-row i made on my trans-atlantic leg of the journey to Frankfurt. L-R: me receiving the full extent of the pasty-fying flash to show off my purple mascara and barette and funny face, a hilarious boy from Hungary who wanted me to buy him 200 duty free cigarettes, and a girl of course from Potomac, MD ridiculously close to where i live. we exchanged msn names. they were swell.
DAY 1 (july 7) mum's and my only lazy day all to ourselves without visitors or appointments to keep. we had breakfast buffet, swam, lounged outside and talked, and went to her friends' shops in Limassol, later that afternoon we watched the news of London in our room on the BBC, Israeli and French news channels.
the hotel cafe outdoors under a wooden awning. where we took most of our meals. cyprus is a whole other world where you can live outdoors all summer because it doesn't rain, the weather is hot, but dry and delicious and things don't flutter away or anything. it's so calm and eerily safer in affect than the states.
beautiful keys at my mother's favourite greek cypriot jewelers' shop. (where i was spoiled and baubled rotten, as you'll see be-low...)
one of the bunch of Cypriot stray kitties that lived next to the outdoor cafe and were always patrolling, playing and begging around the tables. this one was particularly invasive and can be seen CLIMBING my mother's lap to bat at her fork! bwahaha. these cats will claw at you if you even point at them because they're so used to being fed. they're tame but vicious! oh man. they were hilarious when they didn't hurt you. the island is even fuller with strays than Israel, so you have to have a different perception of them than you do in the states. the climate is warmer, and people don't mind them so much as occasionally feed or shoo them...
DAY 2 (july 8) the day we went to the Northern/Turkish half of Cyprus (Nicosia) to have lunch with political-peace-minded friends of my mum's from that side. we were also taken on beautiful and sad drive through a newly over-settled yet magical region of Northern Cyprus, Carinia (sp?) and Carmie across the Five-Fingered Mountain range.
all gussied for our rendez-vous, and looking...something for crossing over the buffer zone. sporting my new hand-made filigree greek silver beaded necklace. it's really lovely. the second picture shows you how i got that foot of hair up on my head so that the locks coming down seem so short. it's quite a knot though. it took an hour to put up when i couldn't sleep that morning for jet-lag, and it uses NO HAIR TIES! haha. and i didn't even have to photoshop, the balcony light made my favourite faceless light effect :D hee...
beautiful mum outside the ho-tel waiting for our dear friend to pick us up. she looked downright exotic and she let me put some eyeliner on her for the day. she wears minimal makeup once in a blue moon, and i was right, the effect of eyeliner on her and nothing else is 10 times better than eyeshadow. she is my hot mamma yamma, ageless.
a view from en route to the North.
as much as i wanted to capture the intense site of the barbed wire, empty wrecked houses and UN soldiers inhabiting the Lieder palace in the buffer zone, the signs clearly said no photography.
on the Turkish side, in mum's friend Maral's language school. a strange but better shot of my pretty mum listening to Maral and sitting with our ride for the day and dear family friend.
Maral driving us to Carinia, and ahead the 'Five-Fingered' Mountains. it's a literal translation from the Greek.
after a ridiculously enormous kabob-tastic lunch (and fries with mayo & ketchup!) with Maral's husband, the former mayor of Turkish Nicosia...Maral took us (mostly for me, somehow she just knew i'd love it) to see an Ottoman Turk built ancient inn recently restored. it's name included the title of the emperor who had it built in the 13th century. Maral referred to it as the Khan Inn. it was just one of the many ancient things preserved in Turkish Nicosia, including a wall of equal age surrounding the city as well as Venetian columns. amazing.
DAY 3 (july 9) we spent saturday with our dear family friends at their home for lunch, to meet their grandchild and for my mother to check her email, discuss things...
most of my pictures are of their home and secret snatches of their wedding pictures and of course them posing with the baby, but i think those are more personal and would be less interesting to anyone but me and my family. we spent the evening at the hotel, and i swam in the sea by myself only to emerge to a greek man who had been watching me swim for a while (as it turned out) and tried to ask me out for a drink. oh man. at least i'm good at acting dumb and skibbling away. stupid bikini'd ameriKan.
that morning at breakfast. can you spot the decadent cafe cat?
DAY 4 (july 10) meeting up with the archaeologists aunty & uncle & my favourite cousINT of all 12 (all from my mother's side) - monsieur zebulan himself. my constant companion my other 3 visits to cyprus age 11-13. he's only 15 now but he's always been my best buddy though we don't see nearly enough of each other. we took a taxi to the city where my Aunt Pam has been digging for 30 years - Ancient Idalion in what is now known as Dali. they took us to their 200 year old village home they're renovating (my uncle is doing a lot of it himself), they'll finish next summer and move there from the states when zeb goes to college. that afternoon we went back to the ho-tel to eat lunch and shmooze and swim (and for me to get my ass kicked in billiards)
zeb in the garden of the old house.
the original outdoor oven (being repaired to be usable!) of the old house.
zeb modeling my mandatory hat for middle-east ridiculous sun adventures. it has this charming floppy rim that often covers only one eye. he followed my lead and declared it a pirate hat! we're inside one of the three main rooms of the old house, and he's only an inch taller than me (a bit over 5 feet) and he reaches the original old door frames as you can see.
on the upstairs veranda outside the loft bedroom that will be his. i just love the view and composition of this shot. this is how beautiful the colours of cyprus are, and i love the texture of the old house's plaster and how bright the colours are. and of course my cousINT is adorable.
a hilariously telling photo of my mum & her sista - my aunty pamela. pam is of course pointing to things on the horizon and telling us what they are, while my mum is doing something involving her camera & purse. hee. behind them is the second story wall to the only upper level loft-room.
a slanty shot to get all the room-view in. zeb and the indoor entranceway to the loft. one used a ladder to enter from the main room below it, and the entrance is only half the size of a normal door as one is meant only to go backwards down the ladder to leave. apparently this is a typical oldold village house structure.
the view from the ho-tel poolside through the funny pineapple shaped palm trees to the very near beach of the Mediterranean. isn't it breathtaking? man oh man. it was my favourite place to be, out there between the sea and the pool...
can you tell how busy we were? eep.
to be continued.
coming soon, israel-cyprus pictures july 10-15th. *curtsey*
including travel, from july 5-10th (before we went to israel)
picture glory and stories within.
>>
this is the view from our hotel room balcony on my first morning in Limassol, Cyprus. the Hawaii Grand ho-tel. and i decided to put something pretty before my actual first picture from the trip...
these are the friends in my seat-row i made on my trans-atlantic leg of the journey to Frankfurt. L-R: me receiving the full extent of the pasty-fying flash to show off my purple mascara and barette and funny face, a hilarious boy from Hungary who wanted me to buy him 200 duty free cigarettes, and a girl of course from Potomac, MD ridiculously close to where i live. we exchanged msn names. they were swell.
DAY 1 (july 7) mum's and my only lazy day all to ourselves without visitors or appointments to keep. we had breakfast buffet, swam, lounged outside and talked, and went to her friends' shops in Limassol, later that afternoon we watched the news of London in our room on the BBC, Israeli and French news channels.
the hotel cafe outdoors under a wooden awning. where we took most of our meals. cyprus is a whole other world where you can live outdoors all summer because it doesn't rain, the weather is hot, but dry and delicious and things don't flutter away or anything. it's so calm and eerily safer in affect than the states.
beautiful keys at my mother's favourite greek cypriot jewelers' shop. (where i was spoiled and baubled rotten, as you'll see be-low...)
one of the bunch of Cypriot stray kitties that lived next to the outdoor cafe and were always patrolling, playing and begging around the tables. this one was particularly invasive and can be seen CLIMBING my mother's lap to bat at her fork! bwahaha. these cats will claw at you if you even point at them because they're so used to being fed. they're tame but vicious! oh man. they were hilarious when they didn't hurt you. the island is even fuller with strays than Israel, so you have to have a different perception of them than you do in the states. the climate is warmer, and people don't mind them so much as occasionally feed or shoo them...
DAY 2 (july 8) the day we went to the Northern/Turkish half of Cyprus (Nicosia) to have lunch with political-peace-minded friends of my mum's from that side. we were also taken on beautiful and sad drive through a newly over-settled yet magical region of Northern Cyprus, Carinia (sp?) and Carmie across the Five-Fingered Mountain range.
all gussied for our rendez-vous, and looking...something for crossing over the buffer zone. sporting my new hand-made filigree greek silver beaded necklace. it's really lovely. the second picture shows you how i got that foot of hair up on my head so that the locks coming down seem so short. it's quite a knot though. it took an hour to put up when i couldn't sleep that morning for jet-lag, and it uses NO HAIR TIES! haha. and i didn't even have to photoshop, the balcony light made my favourite faceless light effect :D hee...
beautiful mum outside the ho-tel waiting for our dear friend to pick us up. she looked downright exotic and she let me put some eyeliner on her for the day. she wears minimal makeup once in a blue moon, and i was right, the effect of eyeliner on her and nothing else is 10 times better than eyeshadow. she is my hot mamma yamma, ageless.
a view from en route to the North.
as much as i wanted to capture the intense site of the barbed wire, empty wrecked houses and UN soldiers inhabiting the Lieder palace in the buffer zone, the signs clearly said no photography.
on the Turkish side, in mum's friend Maral's language school. a strange but better shot of my pretty mum listening to Maral and sitting with our ride for the day and dear family friend.
Maral driving us to Carinia, and ahead the 'Five-Fingered' Mountains. it's a literal translation from the Greek.
after a ridiculously enormous kabob-tastic lunch (and fries with mayo & ketchup!) with Maral's husband, the former mayor of Turkish Nicosia...Maral took us (mostly for me, somehow she just knew i'd love it) to see an Ottoman Turk built ancient inn recently restored. it's name included the title of the emperor who had it built in the 13th century. Maral referred to it as the Khan Inn. it was just one of the many ancient things preserved in Turkish Nicosia, including a wall of equal age surrounding the city as well as Venetian columns. amazing.
DAY 3 (july 9) we spent saturday with our dear family friends at their home for lunch, to meet their grandchild and for my mother to check her email, discuss things...
most of my pictures are of their home and secret snatches of their wedding pictures and of course them posing with the baby, but i think those are more personal and would be less interesting to anyone but me and my family. we spent the evening at the hotel, and i swam in the sea by myself only to emerge to a greek man who had been watching me swim for a while (as it turned out) and tried to ask me out for a drink. oh man. at least i'm good at acting dumb and skibbling away. stupid bikini'd ameriKan.
that morning at breakfast. can you spot the decadent cafe cat?
DAY 4 (july 10) meeting up with the archaeologists aunty & uncle & my favourite cousINT of all 12 (all from my mother's side) - monsieur zebulan himself. my constant companion my other 3 visits to cyprus age 11-13. he's only 15 now but he's always been my best buddy though we don't see nearly enough of each other. we took a taxi to the city where my Aunt Pam has been digging for 30 years - Ancient Idalion in what is now known as Dali. they took us to their 200 year old village home they're renovating (my uncle is doing a lot of it himself), they'll finish next summer and move there from the states when zeb goes to college. that afternoon we went back to the ho-tel to eat lunch and shmooze and swim (and for me to get my ass kicked in billiards)
zeb in the garden of the old house.
the original outdoor oven (being repaired to be usable!) of the old house.
zeb modeling my mandatory hat for middle-east ridiculous sun adventures. it has this charming floppy rim that often covers only one eye. he followed my lead and declared it a pirate hat! we're inside one of the three main rooms of the old house, and he's only an inch taller than me (a bit over 5 feet) and he reaches the original old door frames as you can see.
on the upstairs veranda outside the loft bedroom that will be his. i just love the view and composition of this shot. this is how beautiful the colours of cyprus are, and i love the texture of the old house's plaster and how bright the colours are. and of course my cousINT is adorable.
a hilariously telling photo of my mum & her sista - my aunty pamela. pam is of course pointing to things on the horizon and telling us what they are, while my mum is doing something involving her camera & purse. hee. behind them is the second story wall to the only upper level loft-room.
a slanty shot to get all the room-view in. zeb and the indoor entranceway to the loft. one used a ladder to enter from the main room below it, and the entrance is only half the size of a normal door as one is meant only to go backwards down the ladder to leave. apparently this is a typical oldold village house structure.
the view from the ho-tel poolside through the funny pineapple shaped palm trees to the very near beach of the Mediterranean. isn't it breathtaking? man oh man. it was my favourite place to be, out there between the sea and the pool...
can you tell how busy we were? eep.
to be continued.
coming soon, israel-cyprus pictures july 10-15th. *curtsey*