Articles from this Category
22 July 2023
St Hilarion Castle We have two sights planned for today. I thought we’d do one as early as possible and the other at the end of the day. That way, we would avoid the worst of the day’s 36 degC heat. After an awesome breakfast on the rooftop, we headed out about 0845 on the […]
21 July 2023
Getting from Larnaca to Girne Today we move to Northern Cyprus or the Turkish-occupied part of Cyprus, depending on your point of view, for a five-night stay. We had a choice of the 0845 or 0915 bus to Nicosia, in order to make it across the “border” to collect our rental car at 1100 on […]
21 July 2023
Trooditissa Monastery Today was available for some exploration beyond Larnaca to places that we aren’t going to later on in the trip. I had hoped to get a rental car with the backup plan being going to Limassol by bus. We managed to get a car reasonably cheaply at EUR40 for the day. We had […]
20 July 2023
Attending to essential chores I continued to lie in bed till nearly 0800 despite my 0700 alarm. Wary of the nearly 40 degC heat that’s expected today, I quickly motivated myself to get up and go while Kim continued to sleep. First priority was to get some EUR. The city is dotted with many third […]
18 July 2023
Above: The grounds of the Naval Museum. Killing time Just like in Istanbul last week, we have a long day to kill before an evening flight. We fly from Varna to Larnaca at 2025. The difference is that Istanbul is a big city with limited exploration whereas we didn’t want to get wet and salty […]
11 July 2023
I finally had some “me time” and chilling this morning. I had recommended that Kim visit the Dolmabahce Palace, which I had visited on a previous visit. He did that while I relaxed in the room and then the hotel lobby. I didn’t emerge from the hotel till our lunch together. We bought some sweets […]
10 July 2023
Islands-hopping on the public ferries Being such a glorious morning, we thought we’d go island-hopping on Istanbul’s public ferries once more. Google Maps wasn’t too helpful with the public transport schedules to the islands by ferry because it’s a little faster to go by underground then change to a ferry. It did show a ferry-only […]
9 July 2023
Conquering jetlag We were surprised to have slept till 0615 despite the 6h time change from Seoul. [Edit: It turned out that we adjusted to local time straight up as we had no issues on subsequent days too.] We had an early breakfast soon after it opened at 0700. Looking up my notes from my […]
29 October 2022
Aqueduct of Valens I took Ming to Topkapi Palace around 0900 and left her to it. I had only visited last year, my third visit in thirty years. There was a sight that I hadn’t seen since my first visit thirty years ago though and it was the Aqueduct of Valens. I wandered there from […]
28 October 2022
Basilica Cistern Yerebatan Sarnici or Basilica Cistern is a short walk from our hotel.We had seen the queues before and noted that there is an online queue which is often without anyone.So we booked last night and made our way there after 0900. We breezed straight through and down the steps into the cistern straight […]