Williams in Cyprus

Sorry everyone, we didn't get many pictures posted; I guess internet really isn't as common in cyprus as it is here. And Daddy had the laptop while he was in Prague. But finally, I have a chance to show you the world! Well, not all of it. But what we saw anyway.
This is a Turkish sunset that we saw on the way to Cyprus. Our plane landed in Antalya but we didn't get off, so this is about all we saw of Turkey, except that Daddy went back later by himself.

And here we are at St. Hilarian's castle in cyprus. It was the first thing we went to see. It's quite high; built into a mountain, it has stairs going all the was to the peak. Here we are in front of an entryway.

And here's a view of part of the castle:

And here's the view from St. Hilarion's Castle; you can see Girne/Kyrenia and the Mediterranean.
Daddy and I got to the peak!

And that's all for now, I'm about to eat supper. But don't worry, I have about fifty billion more pictures. I won't post them all, but be sure to check the gallery!
Chloe
P.S. here's a quick link to the gallery.
Our Photo Gallery

I spent the night in Istanbul last night after an evening arrival from Prague en route to Cyprus. Turkish Airline was quite considerate to put me, and several fellow travelers, up in a hotel in the city. I had only a little time to walk around this morning and took this picture from the hotel balcony, looking across the street onto a street market that I later walked through.

I mentioned in my previous post the hotel U Suteru in Prague. I didn't have time to post the photo from the lobby yesterday, so here it is. I'm posting thumbnails of these to save you time. I hope that you can click on the thumbnail and see the bigger image. If not, I think you can view them in the photo gallery.

I must go get my boarding pass now, grab a bite of lunch here in the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, and then I'll be on my way back to the family in Cyprus. I talked to them last night, using my Skype-Out account which is the only reasonable priced way to talk, and they are doing well. I hope they have many pictures to post on the blog, but just have not had a chance to upload them and describe their adventures.
Peter

I was in Prague for just 2 days, working the whole time at the UNVA-Prague campus, which is downtown. This picture is of me on the street in front of the campus office.

The food was good and the hotel I stayed at was a quaint little place in a very old building (earliest reference was 1383), called Hotel U Suteru, about 100 meters from Wenceslaus Square.

Now I'm in Istanbul just for one overnight before I catch my flight tomorrow to Cyprus, to pick up the girls and go to London.
Good Night!

I am sitting in the Istanbul Airport awaiting my connecting flight to Prague. I left the girls in Cyprus to tour around while I jog up north a bit to Prague to work for a couple of days. We ate dinner last night at a seafood restaurant overlooking the Kyrenia harbor. The breeze off the water was refreshing, the food was good, and we watched the harbor come alive for the evening, candle lanterns lining the harbor, swallows darting this way and that, and small cruise boat masts reaching upwards to a cloudless sky. The harbor castle that was once owned by Richard the Lionheart, Guy de Lusignan (ex-king of Jerusalem from France), and various others. Now the harbor is pretty touristy: the sounds of men hawking a boat outing, or a restaurant menu predominate among the sounds of the harbor.

But Chloe hadn't been feeling well -- head cold that Haley had previously -- and this evening she felt okay and was able to eat a good meal. My last with the family before a 3 am departure for Ercan airport to fly to Prague. I'll return to Cyprus Friday, spending a night in Istanbul on the return. We've had to change my flight itinerary about 4 times to get me to Prague because of quibbling between the Northern Cyprus and Southern Cyprus. It's too complicated to summarize here in any meaningful way.

I've posted a couple more pictures to the photo gallery just now. I do have, by the way OnTMolly, a photo editor that I downloaded, to resize the photos. I hadn't shown the girls how to use it yet, though. Thanks for all your comments! Keep 'em coming! Love to all of you.
Peter

Hey guys! Sorry I didn’t get to finish my post yesterday. It was so late! We never get to bed here any earlier than midnight.
Laura told you about our shopping excursion in the Girne city center. It’s as picturesque as I thought it would be! I’m sorry I haven’t been able to post any pictures; I discovered that daddy’s laptop, the only one we’re using, doesn’t have any sort of photo-editing program, so there’s no way we can make the pictures smaller. Anyway, the Girne shopping trip was quite fun. We had our only short meal I’ve ever had here at the port. I ordered a traditional Cypriot meal: a sandwich made from thick bread, “squeaky cheese (I forgot the real name),” and cucumber slices. Very good. Then we shopped around and bought some souvenirs. I discovered something about the guys here. They will very obviously stare at girls, and sometimes shout things to them or otherwise try to get their attention. This especially applies to foreigners, specifically those with long blonde hair. Alas.
Today we visited Lefcoşa/Nicosia, the split capital of Cyprus. We were going to go to the covered market, but we didn’t find it. However, we did find a mosque that had origionally been a cathedral called the Agia Sophia, not the one in Spain of course. But we couldn’t go in because there were two funerals going on. Then we had to go back to the hotel because some of the people needed to attend a meeting.
On the way rushing to the bus we heard the Muslim call to prayer. At first it sounded like someone had turned his radio on really loud, but then it echoed louder and louder and we could tell what it was. Arabic singing is really cool; all wavering around and fluctuating or whatever you call it. But even though 99% of the population is Muslim, everyone ignored it.
Another thing I must comment on is the driving. Everyone drives on the left side. Most of the streets are hardly wider than the alleys here, and people still walk in the middle of them and park on the sides of them. Sometimes our bus would pass within inches of a stopped car or walking child while traveling at breakneck speeds. And everyone drives like that! Seatbelts exist, but nobody uses them, so they often don’t even work.
This evening we went to a club called Camelot, which has a beach and a restaurant. The restaurant is called The Legend. The food was legendary. Really.
First, the waiter came to our table and asked me if I would like to drink coke or wine. Honestly, do they have a legal drinking age here? I’ve seen a girl my age drink wine. Then we started out the meal with the meses, the beginning of a traditional Turkish Cypriot meal. The meses are little dishes made from mashed or creamed or diced things mixed with herbs or sauces or other things. Some quite good and some not so enjoyable. And once we stuff ourselves with meses, they bring out some fried things. Some unidentifiable, but one was obviously fried squeaky-cheese. And then, when we were full to the brim, they brought out meat. And then more meat. Next some more meat. One of the meats they brought was beef, and it seemed to be in the shape of a tongue, so we thought maybe it was cow’s tongue, but then they brought out chicken exactly like it, and we thought maybe it wasn’t chicken tongue. After two or three hours of that, we saw a dessert buffet and thought maybe if we got some dessert they would get the idea and stop feeding us. All the desserts looked sooooo good (and believe me they were) that we just had to heap our plates full! And when we got back, there was more meat on our plates. Of course, we had to taste it.

And thus concludes our day. Whew! I’m going to bed. Good night!
Chloe