Where I've Been

It's been a solid ten days since I last posted, and I feel a little out of practice. My reasons for lack of posting have been far from having nothing to write about, but rather lack of internet access from where I've been: I managed to justify another escape from the snows and preoccupations with fondue in Swtizerland by persuading my brother to join me on a week-long sojourn on the beaches of Cyprus.

For those who think that my life since moving to Europe has become one big Club Med holiday, I'll remind you that everything in Europe is within stone-throw distance. Many of my escapades over recent months have been accomplished on long weekends. But this was a real vacation - a full week of no laptop, no dodgy dial-up connections in hotel rooms after dark, no searching for wifi cafes in the pre-dawn light, and no blogging. I did, in fact, write at least ten blog postings in my head (and they were really good, too) but I didn't have the foresight to carry something with me to scribble on. Now that I'm home, those ten cranial postings seem to be either permanently lost, or are only subject to recall in varying fragments; most frustrating. So I am resorting to a picture blog to recount what the week held.

To start with, there was lots of lounging by this:


And when we were bored with that, lying on this:


Every morning, running through this:


Or along clifftop trails with viewpoints like this:


And, not but certainly not least, eating this:


(Ignore the crustaceans off to the left, those belonged to my brother)

So I suppose I can understand why my life might look a little like Club Med to an innocent bystander. If it helps, I am now putting in manic marathon stretches in front of my laptop, freaking out over inbox overload and looming-large deadlines.

But for those who want to escape all that for a week in a food lovers/wine lovers/beach lovers/trail runners paradise, I highly recommend Cyprus. We rented a 3-bedroom 3-bathroom villa by the beach for 370E for a week, and promptly spent the perceived savings on massive amounts of local food and wine. Vegan food options were excellent, in a Mediterranean sense (in other words, not a lot of variety beyond nuts, salads and stuffed or grilled vegetables in olive oil - all very good). I didn't take my bike, but if I had, it would have been a mountain bike; the roads were often narrow and a little on-again off-again with the paving. The trail running is out of this world: miles of dirt tracks through olive, almond and orange groves, rocky trails climbing up through steeply terraced vineyards, and moonscaped clifftop terrain descending down to long stretches of palm-shaded paths hugging white sandy beaches.

Now, back to that inbox...