You may have noticed there was something of a blank here at Lucid Ephemera for a few weeks while I went off and did festive things and had a holiday. More details on Italians in puffy jackets and wild boar salami follow in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I hope all of you [...]
Archive for the ‘Cyprus’ Category
2010 and 2011, thank you and hello
Posted in Aleppo, archaeology, architecture, Australia, autumn, Berlin, bread, British colonial mansions, cathedrals, chocolate, Christmas, churches, Crete, Cretins, Cyprus, Damascus, day trips, deer, Dodgy taxi drivers, driving, elbow, England, expat, fleas, food, Germany, Greece, history, Italy, Liverpool, manor houses, markets, Morocco, mosques, museums, odd hotels, Ottomans, Phillipine overseas domestic workers, post offices, Recalcitrant stereos, rowing, shopping, singing, smuggling, summer, Sunday, Syria, The Cyprus Question, The Mediterranean Middle Lane, tombs, tourism, travel, Turkey, Uncategorized, Venetians, Volkswagens, Volkswagons, weather, winter, wordless, work, working from home, Xania on January 4, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Wordless Wednesday
Posted in architecture, Cyprus, England, history, Italy, Syria, Uncategorized on July 21, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Prickly Pears and Goat Bones
Posted in Cyprus, food on August 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I’ve enthused about Cypriot food here before, but there is more to rave about. Bear with me and I’ll do my best not to go all Stephanie Alexander on you (I find her breathless rapture kind of tiresome, along the lines of ‘we stopped at a Tuscan market and bought fresh sheep’s cheese made by [...]
I Am Blessed
Posted in cathedrals, Cyprus on August 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Save perhaps the church in Rome that’s covered in monk’s bones or the occasional glimpse of a decaying saint, it’s rare that visiting a religious building is a weird and wonderful experience. This would however be an accurate description of my visit to a little Byzantine church in the Greek Cypriot half of Nicosia’s old [...]
Bloody Museums
Posted in Cyprus, England, museums, The Cyprus Question, Turkey on August 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
In Nicosia are two of the creepiest museums I’ve ever visited. The first was the ‘Museum of National Struggle’ in (Greek) South Nicosia, an institution dedicated to the four-year fight to rid Cyprus of British colonial rule, which ended in 1960. The displays chronicle the campaign with this aim that was conducted by EOKA, a [...]
Crossing the Line
Posted in Cyprus, day trips, The Cyprus Question, Turkey on August 7, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Yesterday I visited a country that doesn’t exist. Not as an official nation, that is; as a place it looked pretty real to me. I crossed the line (deliberately, this time, as opposed to last time) into Northern Nicosia, which is part of Northern Cyprus. The northern half of Cyprus was invaded by Turkey in [...]
Spires and Minarets
Posted in architecture, cathedrals, Cyprus, history, mosques, Ottomans, The Cyprus Question, Turkey, Venetians on August 7, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Cyprus seems to have been invaded by everyone from the Turks to the armies of Mordor. There were Crusaders of various stripes, different species of French nobles and at least two types of Italians (Genoese and Venetians), let alone the various incursions of the last five hundred years. Each has left their mark on the [...]
Signs of the Times
Posted in Cyprus, food on August 5, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Lady of the Villa
Posted in British colonial mansions, Cyprus on August 2, 2009 | 2 Comments »
We’ve just taken up residence in a 1940s villa and I’m quite smitten with it. Lest that sound grand, it’s a crumbling, paint-peeling research institute rather than a flash manor, and we’re sharing it with multiple other scholars and staff, but it’s no less endearing for that. I’m becoming a connoissieur of residential research institutes; [...]
The Armpit of Cyprus
Posted in Cyprus, summer on August 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I’d been warned about Nicosia. Hearing that it was our next destination, hotel receptionists, seasoned researchers and locals alike would grimace and make a comment about Nicosia’s renowned summer heat. The Beloved railed about how the city was placed in the worst possible site for a city at this latitude: the bottom of a valley [...]
