As I boarded the plane for my trip over to Cyprus Monday, I realized that this was my 20th summer in the Mediterranean. This realization made me feel very old. Anyway, I made it over without incidence, other than the bizarre incident standing in line in security at Paris. The guy in line in front of me was carrying a small store in his pockets and pulled the following out of his pockets: 2 wallets, 14 ink pens, 3 handfuls of change (at least 40 coins), passport, 2 key rings with at least 10 keys each, 2 carabiners, 2 handkerchiefs, and a belt. It was like watching a magic trick.
I spent last night in Larnaka, and Bill and I walked down to the beach to see what, if anything, had changed. It looked like nothing had changed until we approached Goody’s (a Greek fast food chain), and realized that Goody’s had been replaced by a Burger King. I thought Bill was going to lose it, he is a big fan of Goody’s club sandwich, which is good, but not as great as Bill thinks it is. This led to a mini-rant on Bill’s part, a new record for him, he had only been on the island for about an hour and already freaked out.
This morning we picked up the rental car and drove to Polis. Well, we drove to Polis with two detours. Our first detour was in Paphos where I might have made a wrong turn and we ended up a little confused about where we were. The second detour, which was the one we planned on, was a trip out to Ayios Georgios to stop at one of our favorite tavernas for lunch. The taverna looks out over the water and serves pretty good fresh octopus. Hard to beat a good meal of octopus, fries, halloumi, and salad while sitting in the shade with a nice breeze watching the boats go by. After this brief stop, we headed on to Polis.
In Polis after we dropped our stuff off at our hotel, we went to the store to get some supplies, such as coffee, water, breakfast stuff, etc. The best part of the grocery store run was finding three bags of potato chips that I have not evaluated yet, more to come on my award-winning research in this field tomorrow. The funniest part of the trip, at least for me, was watching Bill almost get mowed down by a shopper who was dragging one of the wheeled small carts (see picture) around behind her. For some reason, he did find it as humorous as I did. After this, we relaxed for a while (made sure the internet was working, caught up on email, unpacked, charged electronics, etc.) before we went to one of my favorite restaurants for dinner down in Latchi, and watched the sunset – an average one by Polis standards (see picture below). Tomorrow we start work at the museum.
RSM
Ancient History Ramblings 