Category: Cyprus

I live in Cyprus for many years now. It is a beautiful little island in Mediterranean Sea. It features warm weather for most of the year, sea, very kind and hospital people, plenty of jobs in IT industry, good food and plenty of alcohol, stable currency, and more. It’s really a nice place to live if you can handle small towns and villages. It’s also a great place to raise the kids.

Not much happens here. It is a quiet and simple place. Yet, when something happens or when I write about it, I post it to Cyprus category.

Jin Ciao. The new food stop.

Olga and I couldn’t decide what we wanted to eat tonight. Olga was too tired to cook. I was too lazy to do so. Olga was mildly hungry, while I wanted a hot supper. We were discussing several usual options, but nothing felt appealing. So I dived my hand into the box with all delivery menus that we have and started to check them all out one by one.

Somehow I ended up holding the Jin Ciao Chinese Food menu. Jin Ciao must be the most promoted Chinese food brand in the country. They have several spots in Limassol alone. Their ads appear on television. And thier place is permanently reserved in the Municipal Garden for large events, like Limassol Annual Wine Festival.

Strangely though we never tried it. Our favourite Chinese delivery was Pagoda and our choice for Chinese food out was China Town Restaurant. We’ve also been in a couple of other Chinese restaurants, and found them pretty good, but not as good as Pagoda and the China Town.

Continue reading Jin Ciao. The new food stop.

No parking

The weather wasn’t very good for sea swimming today. It was raining during the night and sun was still hiding behind clouds in the morning. So Maxim and I went for a little walk in the downtown instead of the beach. Better even, we walked a couple of streets that I’ve never walked before. Made a few shots.

Album location: /photos/2005/2005-09-17_Downtown

Trip to Troodos

Best trips are usually spontaneous. No planning, no strategy – just a will to have some fun. My friend Dmitry and his wife Lana called me up today and said that they are about to leave on a trip to mountains and asked if I would join them. I did. It’s been a while since I went up there so I was glad I had a chance to go again.

We drove up to Platres and parked near the famous Psilo Dentro restaurant with a trout farm. Dmitry and Lana convinced me to take a walk to the waterfall. It shouldn’t have been any futher than a kilometer away, and the walk was supposed to improve our appetites. I’ve been numerous times to the Psilo Dentro restaurant, but I never went to the waterfall. Today I decided that it’s finally time to see it and be done with it. So I agreed.

The road turned out to be much tougher than I expected. It was long, heavily upstream and with lots of obstacles, like huge stones and waterstreams that had to be crossed via stepping stones. It would have been much easier if I didn’t have the camera to take care of.

Anyway, about 40 minutes later we finally reached our goal – a small waterfall. There was nothing particularly spectacular about it, but I made a few snaps anyway.

Quick return to the restaurant for an outstanding pork chop and beer. Now don’t get me wrong – I am all for grilled trout. Especially when it comes as fresh as it can possibly be. But Psilo Dentro pork chops are perfect. They are of the proper size and also juicy, and delicious.

On our way back to Limassol we had lots of laughs as Lana navigated us through the brief history of terrible Russian pop music. The tour ended with one of the tapes getting stack in the player with no hope of being removed, stopped or paused. It’ll play until the age of times. Or until Dimitry will get himself a new car.

I had a great time today. I should go again some time in the near future. I want to go together with Olga and Maxim. They need a good day out with some fresh air.

Album location: /photos/2005/2005-09-11_Troodos

The story of Big Leonidas

The bright one among you have probably guessed by now that my name is Leonid. Well, in Greek and Cypriot culture there is no such name. There is a variation though. It is Leonidas.

As with many other names there was once a hero named Leonidas. In Greece, he was called Big Leonidas. I suspected it, but never got to learn the story until recently.

One of the aging Cypriots asked me if I know the story of Big Leonidas after he learned my name. I had to answer negative. The guy looks at me, relaxes in the armchair preparing to tell a long and noble story and tells me this (word in word):

Once there was a warrior. His name was Big Leonidas. Five hundred… no… one thousand Persians attacked him. And they all died.

He than gave me one of those looks that demanded appreciation. He spent the whole twenty freaking seconds educating me. Wow. It took me another twenty seconds to realize that the story was over. I thanked him afterwards…

Hard Rock in Stork

I attended an excellent musical event today. It was a hard rock party in Stork club. Basically, it was the crowd from the forum with all those KSP musicians – Alexander (Doors), Albert, Slava Dyrdine, Tony, Victor, Andrey, etc. There were few new music masters too.

I had an enourmous amount of fun. That is my lousy excuse for not taking a lot of pictures. It was the good thing that I put the camera back into bag as I got pretty drunk by the end of the evening and could easily lose or brake it. But I didn’t. Yey! Hopefully there will be lots of pictures from other people.

Oh, and if we are lucky enough someone might have even caught me on video. Dancing. In the most embarrassing of ways… Told you it was a lot of fun! :)

Album location: /photos/2005/2005-09-06_Hard_Rock_in_Stork/

Update: More photos from Alexander Avanesov are available here.