Troodos Mountains |

Today was Troodos mountain day.
Ran out to the west coast of Cyprus. That would guarantee me the scenic route up the mountains. FULL of twisties, sheer drops and drop-dead-gorgeous views.
Then the road entered the clouds and the rain.
Sooooo glad I was in a car. A little Kia with a manual gearbox (“stick”, for the North American audience). A car that is nimble and quick. Which is just as well. The road was littered with pine cones, pine needles and rocks. Yup. Rocks. Some the size of a rugby ball.

Headed to Kykkos Monastery. TomTom has never heard of the place. And would not let me plug in the coordinates. But I found my way to Kykkos anyway.
What is with the Dutch? Maybe they never visit Cyprus? Maybe the Cypriots beat them at footie? Everyone else has. Zing!

Then I planned to visit Mount Olympus. But TomTom did not know of any mountain by that name, or any other, within hundreds of kilometres, of Kykkos.

By now I had spent a couple of hours in cloud cover, I reasoned I may as well head to my apartment, located a little further east in the Troodos mountains. What an optimist. TomTom had never heard of the guest house, nor the street that it was on. But at least TomTom had heard of the town.
Now this was serious. I needed to get there tonight.
Dug out the laptop. Google’d the location. Then compared what roads TomTom was showing, with GoogleMaps. Took my best guess, pointed out to TomTom where we needed to go. And zoomed off.
Things went well, till I hit Agros, and TomTom tried to send me down a dead-end street. And not the street that I needed. Switched to psychic navigation and found the place.
Saw the signage to my accommodation. Walked up the goat track. OK. A slight exaggeration. A really, really steep alleyway. Wide enough for a tiny car. But there was no parking anywhere nearby.

Phoned to let my hosts know I was here. Alexis answered. Came over. Showed me the apartment. Gave me directions to a supermarket n more.
I brought my luggage indoors.
That was quite the workout. Not only is the alley REALLY steep (40%?), but there are two flights of stairs in order to get to the apartment. The Brecons were not this bad. hahahahahaha

Unloaded then took my backpack (rucksac for the Brits) and went shopping. As for all of us, which includes Cypriots, celebrating “real Christmas”, (following the Julian Calendar), the lights were on.

Christmas market was closed.
But the butcher was open, and he carries fruit n veg. Picked up a pork chop. A whole one. A courgette. Some tangerines, and a lemon. The cost was almost 5euros.
Walked around but could not find the supermarket. So when in doubt, have a glass of wine. Which I did. Gave me time out of the rain. And I found the supermarket for TomTom.
Picked up a bottle of wine to go with the pork. Added some pita, to mop up the juices.

The return to my apartment was quite the workout. This town has very steep roads, and even steeper alleyways. I used both.
It was all worth it.

The pork chop was outstanding. Seriously good. I was thinking of saving a piece for breakfast, but………. hahahahaha. It was sooOoOoo tasty. Almost crispy on top. I can taste the pork chop even as I write these words. Yum 🙂
The courgette slices marinated underneath the chop, and cooked to perfection.
Pita toasted, then set to soak up the remaining juices.
This was all done with today’s equivalent of a Baby Belling. Checkout an example of what I cooked on, for over a year……

The whole unit had a foot-print of approximately one square foot.
Back to the pork chop. Seriously tasty. Or as I should refer to the meat, “hi-ri-mi bri-zoy-la”.