Troodos

Cyprus National Internet Portal for Open Data

It is via this Cyprus Mail article that I’ve learned that not only Cyprus has an official Open Data portal, but that it’s also the best in Europe:

Cyprus is one of the top five European Union countries in the field of Open Data for 2018, while the new National Open Data Portal data.gov.cy scored highest among 31 open data portals in Europe, a special honour and recognition for the Open University of Cyprus (OUC) that developed and implemented the National Open Data Portal in collaboration with the public administration and personnel department of the finance ministry.

So far I’ve only had a quick look around, and I have to say that it’s quite impressive! Even though most of it is in Greek, Google Chrome translation handles it nicely. Here are a couple of interesting bits to get you started:

And there is so much more … Well done, Open University of Cyprus!

Agios Nicholas church, 2012

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to stop by the Agios Nicholas church. The church was destroyed a few years ago when it went completely under water of the nearby lake. This year Cyprus saw plenty of rain, but so far the water levels haven’t reached that far yet. There is still snow in the Troodos mountains, but I don’t think that melting those will be enough to drown the church again.

Have a look at my Flickr set for previous pictures of this church.

WRC 2009 – FxPro Cyprus Rally : SS6

Yesterday I went to see WRC 2009 FxPro Cyprus Rally Special Stage 6. It’s a 30 km long stage, which pass by the famous Kelefos Bridge. Usually it’s packed with spectators, and once the stage was even cancelled because the proper safety level could not have been achived. Instead of watching the rally at the Kelefos Bridge view point, we went to the Finish of the stage and walked down a few turns from there. It was an asphalt road with a few patches of gravel. Weather conditions weren’t the best from the spectators’ point of view – cold, windy, with occasional rain drops. But that could not have stopped true rally fans.

As always, I made a few pictures and uploaded them to my Flickr photostream.

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

Troodos Rally 2004: Section 6

As I have already mentioned, Cyprus Automobile Association (CAA) has sent me the itinerary for Troodos Rally 2004. Tomorrow, the last day of the event, has two sections – Section 5 and Section 6. Races of Section 5 are way too early in the morning, so I guess we’ll skip them all. Section 6 though is a bit later and it does progressively gets closer to Limassol. I am thinking of watching one race, either from Delikipos at 10:00am or from Monagrouli at 11:15.

In case you are interested in the event, I have pinned down few points of tomorrow’s Section 6 on this map of Cyprus (2.6 MBytes JPEG with 3232×1993 pixels).