Hi All,
Our flights were smooth and the luggage arrived in Cyprus with us. The only "negative" was that I somehow managed to leave the book I was reading in the Detroit airport. I noticed two minutes after I sat down but wasn’t allowed to get off the plane to go look for it. I was really sad because I really was enjoying the book: A Day of Small Beginnings by Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum. We flew from Detroit to Paris which sounds a lot more exciting than it is since we stayed only in the terminal and wifi is limited to 15 free minutes. But that was long enough for me to check the downloadable e books from my library and Amazon.com. My library only had the paper edition but Amazon had it. This was great incentive for me to finally use my Kindle and when we got to Cyprus I was able to log-on to the marina wifi and order it from Amazon and load it onto my Kindle. THANKS HAR FOR ENCOURAGING ME TO GET THE KINDLE AND TEACHING ME HOW TO USE IT. AND THANKS TO CID AND ALAN AT THE ROANOKE COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY FOR SHOWING ME HOW TO DOWNLOAD LIBRARY BOOKS. I love it! I don’t mind reading the Kindle though I miss the feel of a real book. But with the Kindle I can’t lose treasured book marks like the whirling dervish woven book mark I lost in my book. I do hope whoever found the book reads it and likes it as much as I am. Or the security folks at the airport disposed of it as a security risk. That would really be too bad.
Ru
DoraMac
Cyprus in November 21, 2011 : Beware of what you wish for!
“I’m so done with hot weather!” That’s what I told everyone when we left the tropical weather of Southeast Asia and India behind. Summer in Turkey and Cyprus was hot, but not like tropical heat. We’ll we’re back in North Cyprus and we don’t have tropical weather now!
We arrived November 18th and it felt a bit cool but not cold. In the afternoon our friends Bill and Judy on BeBe offered to drive us in their shared rental car to get groceries. They had even been kind enough to try to pick us up that morning at the airport. However, the plan had been tentative; the cruiser they share the car with thought he might have needed it. So when Randal and I didn’t see them at the terminal we took a taxi. But our plane had been early and Bill and Judy were killing time in the coffee shop so we managed to miss each other. Our refrigerator was indeed bare, so we were glad for the chance to begin to refill it. On our way to the grocery store it started to pour and then hail. On our way home we came to a section of road that looked like winter! So much for mild winters! We saw two cars that had slid off the road and another that was about to get itself stuck trying to pull the cars from the field back to the road. I hadn’t brought my camera, but luckily Bill and Judy have a phone that takes photos so we have proof of the heavy hail storm.
They also captured the rainbow at the end of the road. It literally did go from sea to shore: these are both sides.
That night I made the bed with flannel sheets and 3 blankets!
Saturday we woke to enough sun that I put in a laundry. The sun lasted about an hour and then the rain came so the clothes spent the day drying in our saloon. We’d never had rain while we were here in August; at least I don’t remember any. Every day was laundry day and it dried in a few hours. ( Now it takes most of the day even in bright sun.) By about 3pm the rain stopped and I needed to get some exercise so took my walk up to the 5th century AD basilica I’d visited so many times in August. This time I had on a turtleneck, a sweater and my rain jacket instead of a sleeveless shirt and shorts. But it was just as lovely.
Fields had some green shoots from the fall rains.
The basilica had puddles!
The mosaics were not so dusty.
And this time the puppy that came running had a little boy with him.
Who is walking whom?
They were so cute.
Later the little boy came back with a photocopied sheet of information and map of the layout of the basilica. I’d read on another web site about the family across the street who would bring the leaflet and collect the entrance fee, 5TL; but I’d never had it happen before. I had a 20 TL note with me but didn’t want to try to explain that so told him I had no money and tried to return the paper. He indicated that I should keep it. I knew I’d be back so I wasn’t worried about the money.
Judy had mentioned that 4:30 was the beginning of dark so I started back after just a short time.
Lots of atmosphere
Rain clouds were rolling back in
I saw a lovely sunset even as the light rain began to fall.
A second basilica visit, the local veggie market and our picnic by the sea…next email.