Back in Cyprus

So, I arrived back on Cyprus yesterday afternoon. Bill and I arrived on the same flight from Athens, so we were able to pick up our rental car, load up our gear, and make it out to Polis by 5:30. We had our usual room waiting for us at Renos, so it wasn’t long before we were settled in, and even made a trip to the grocery store to pick up some supplies, including the requisite potato chips. We are the first from Polis to arrive for the summer field season – Amy arrives next early next week. We found out when we checked in that Renos, which is usually pretty quiet, will be quite busy since another archaeology project is arriving next week and renting 17 rooms for a month. We then drove down to Latchi and had dinner at Yialos which has a fantastic marinated chicken and halloumi pita and a great sunset. I tried to stay up as late as I could to help get onto Cypriot time, but didn’t make it past 9.

This morning we got up and headed out to the museum. Along the way we stopped at the local Cyta store and Bill bought a new sim card for his phone – an annual event for Bill. Then we walked over to the museum and talked to the staff about our planned work at the apotheke. It was a pleasant visit even though there was some talk about the possibility of rats in the store room and a “strange smell.” We’ll know more tomorrow when we head over there. On the way back to the hotel we took a detour to the site and were pleasantly surprised to find that they had cleared off all the grass and weeds. This gave us a chance to look at EF2 (this [picture above] is where the material we have been working on for the last few seasons has come from) and then at EF1 (this [picture below] is where the material we will be working on this summer comes from).

After looking at the sites, we headed back to the hotel instead of visiting the apotheke. We used the rest of the morning to take some time to organize our data and make sure our databases are ready to go when we start looking at the pottery. tomorrow. We had noticed on our walking trip through part of the village that one of our favorite restaurants that had been closed for the last two summers had reopened. We decided to to eat lunch there and see if the food was still as good and inexpensive as it used to be. Fortunately it was, even though it now advertises that it features Cypriot and Romanian food – an unusual combination. Not much else to say, the weather has been sunny and in the 70s, so it is very pleasant.

RSM