Market day - Girne

This morning we travelled along bougainvillia  bedecked lanes through villages on the slopes of the mountains to Bellapais and the remains of its Gothic abbey. Lawrence Durrell who wrote Bitter Lemons about his life on the island between 1953 and 1956  lived in a house not far from the abbey.

Better in LARGE.

Afterwards we drove down to Girne and Wednesday was market day.  Many country people had made the journey to sell their luscious fruit,  vegetables,  olive oil, carob oil, nuts and rustic baking.  We bought a type of round tahini bread which was delicious, more like the sweet pastry of the Danish pastry with lashings of tahini inside.  The farmer's wife had also made different varieties with herbal fillings and wrapped up in cellophane.

This was a fantastic place for people watching.  It had a very cosmopolitan feel to it with many of us Brits of whom some were tourists and some ex-pats.  The country people in their colourful fabrics and headscarves and urban Turks looking for a bargain.