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A brunch with friends
The day after our lunch with Colin and Louise Kessel we saw them again when we were invited to brunch with Sarah and Dudley Kessel. Another delightful meeting.

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The breakfast was more than I eat at home; a snuggle with Doreen when the nurses weren't looking.

The first time we crossed over to Turkish Cyprus, a few years ago, it was by foot. We were amazed that Turkish Lefkosia (Nicosia) looked so poor and slum-like.

We were pleasantly surprised this time when we crossed over by car at a different crossing. Passing with Israeli passports was not a problem. We saw established towns with nice houses and apartment buildings, cars and shops. Turkey must invest a lot of money in the towns on the northern side of Cyprus.  It was Sunday and since the Turkish side is Moslem, we presumed that it would be a normal day, but almost all shops were closed. We saw one sign for Burger King, but no other well-known brand names.

An interesting thing is that this castle is thought to be the inspiration of the castle of the wicked queen in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.

Angelica then drove us to Bellapais. It is a delightful village, with many interesting houses.

The author Lawrence Durell (Alexandra Quartet) lived in Bellapais in the early 1950’s where he
wrote Bitter Lemons, describing the struggle for independence from the British occupation.

The village is best known for its splendid Abbey, built by the Augustine monks who fled Jerusalem when it was captured by Saladin in 1187.

Surrounding this village are many orange groves, so when we passed a stall
offering freshly squeezed orange juice, we couldn't resist.

In addition to the delicious glass of orange juice I received two oranges as a present.

We then made our way to Kyrenia on the coast. Known to Israelis for its reasonably priced all-inclusive luxury hotels, beaches and casinos which we didn’t manage to see, having added St Hilarion castle to our itinerary.

We had a very expensive lunch at the marina and then made our way up stairs to the Kyrenia castle.

We wanted to see the remains of a shipwreck, displayed in the castle museum, discovered in 1965 by a scuba diver searching for sponges. The ship with a single sail was in use at the time of Alexander the Great and sank 2300 years ago just off the coast of Kyrenia. It has amazing finds: stone grain mills acting as ballast, over 500 amphora that contained the remains of wine and olive oil, and other ceramic jars with seeds of grapes, figs, and olives and 9,000 unshelled walnuts! Spear points and javelins were stuck in the hull, suggesting it may have been attacked by pirates.

Exhausted, we were quite happy to return to Larnaca after a delightful day.

May 2026 - Visit to Cyprus

On our eventful visit to Cyprus at the end of May we still managed to experience some new things:

We've been wanting to visit a trout farm and restaurant for some time. We ate grilled trout at the Psilo Dentros restaurant in the Trodos area but a heavy rain downpour prevented a visit to the trout farm.


We visited the beautiful Kykkos Monastery. The monastery displays hundreds of mosaics. Mary is usually portrayed holding baby Jesus but sometimes, as here, she is cradling the dead Jesus after the crucifixion. Many mosaics depict biblical characters or scenes, like Noah's Ark.


The Larnaca Archeological Museum was a pleasant surprise. The museum is not large but well laid out with excellent descriptions in English. We were especially pleased that we have been to many of the sites represented at the museum. We liked the burial site with the fossilized body of a man buried under the floor of a neolithic building. There were many depictions of women holding their breasts or bellies and were amused to see the earrings from the ear lobes which has now become a fashion among our youth.

May 2026 - Thank you, Minda

Minda is the caregiver for Louise, Doreen's sister. She is doing a wonderful job, and we expressed our thanks to her and celebrated her birthday.
Me, Minda, Denise, Louise, Doreen

The Jewish wedding  ---- the lovely bride Viv ....the Xhosa wedding

Gideon and Daliah marry
Congratulations to Jose and David Keyson and the Reijzer clan on the marriage of Gideon and Daliah. The Reijzers have been part of our family since we met Hans and Lottie on Ulpan in 1965. Although they returned to Amsterdam we have kept constant contact with them.  Our friendship has passed to our respective children who are close friends of their children.

April 2026 - Doreen and Louise go for a walk

Doreen and her sister Louise Braverman with her caregiver Minda went on lovely walk along the Netanya beach promenade.

Son Aviv and granddaughter  Ilay were visiting (and helping) so we took the opportunity to go to Haifa (about 60 Kms north)  to have a  delicious dinner at the Najma Restaurant with our two grandchildren living there Itamar Levy and Lotem Segoli. It's always a pleasure being with our grandchildren.

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• The Academic and General Book Store is a remarkable bookstore like bookstores from old. Shelves upon shelves of books on every subject with staff who know every book they have and where to find it - without the use of computers. Itamar asked for a book which he couldn't find in Israel and he was taken immediately to where it lay.
• Usually the picturesque Chantara Waterfall has very little water but the effect of the recent rains was evident in the amount of water loudly pouring down.
  
• The visit to the Medical museum showing the the various old instruments and methods used was a first for us . We can recommend a visit. Many of the instruments are in working order, like the one generating an electric current which still works as Itamar can testify.
  

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Morris Kahn 1930 - 2026

Lake Paralimni is a fresh water lake that is dry in summer.
The lake is not a salt water lake but it is brackish and is also
visited by the migrating flamingos.

We had read that this year the number of Flamingos at
Paralimni lake had greatly increased and were not disappointed
by the large number of flamingos there.