Chasing the sun...

It looked like it was a warm and pleasant day down on the coast so we decided to measure up the spare bedroom with a view to paneling the walls like we have done in our room and then went down to the woodyard to get an idea of the price before embarking on the project.  In the woodyard the resident little cat was taking advantage of a spot of sunshine.  She is tiny and sweet and as I gave her a cuddle it was clear that she had kittens and within a few minutes a little skittish kitten appeared looking absolutely tiny up against the wood moving machine.  The man from the woodyard is a big bear of a Cypriot man so I was amazed when he called for the kitten and stood talking to us gently rubbing the mum's tummy and making a fuss of her.  These are clearly working cats keeping down the vermin population in the yard but in return they have attention, food and shelter and that is good.

Having got the information about the wood we decided to go and take a walk along a spot of nearby coastline that we refer to as 'our beach' for some reason.  We have wandered along here on numerous occasions and one year I found three or four tree trunks washed up.  The cove used to be surrounded by eucalyptus trees and we went down once to find that they had all been removed which was a shame but eucalyptus can be a nightmare.  We were absolutely gobsmacked today to find that they are building right on the edge of the land right next to the sea so access, because everything has been churned up by heavy plant, is nigh on impossible.   What a shame, that lovely unspoiled quiet bit of coastline is now going to be covered by buildings and the owners of the properties just up the road who probably thought they would never have anything built in front of them have been proved wrong.

We used to see the goats being walked along here but their pathway has now been cut off by buildings and a little bit further down the coast there are a whole load of white poles marking out plots for a huge Aristo development.  It would just be nice if all the hundreds of empty properties could be dealt with first but this is never going to happen and now this beautiful corner of the island is in danger of being over-developed - we felt a little sad as we picked our way along the ruts from massive tyres of earth moving vehicles and took a photograph to the left and to the right before this piece of coastline changes forever.  Our spirits were a little dampened by the whole experience and we decided to grab some quick lunch in town before returning home.

Several people have mentioned the Ari Lahmajoun eating establishment in Polis to us - it is a Lebanese eatery just round the corner from the Royal Cafe - we had heard it was cheap and cheerful and as we were nearby we decided to give it a go.  Lahmajoun or Lahmacun is an Armenian or Turkish pizza, a round thin piece of dough topped with minced meat or vegetables and herbs and spices and then baked in an oven.

Always happy to give cheap, cheerful and ethnic a go we decided to stay for lunch and I chose Lamb lahmajoun and some falafel which came with a sort of salad and some pickled vegetables.  John opted for the Shish tawouk chicken meal and apart from the fact that his salad had a flavour he didn't recognise and was almost fishy everything else was great and with two cans of Coke our bill came to a massive 13 euros.  We would definitely try it again.

We returned home to a quiet afternoon and evening - the fire was roaring and the cats were taking full advantage - our normally skittish Mrs Minniver was fully stretched out to get maximum warmth to her belly - she clearly felt completely at home and totally unthreatened - so good to see as she normally runs round on her knees in terror of her own shadow.