The most perfect, relaxing week away. I had never been to Cyprus before but was looking for guaranteed sunshine and relaxation, and this place didn’t fail to deliver!
We booked it through James Villas and you can watch a super cheesy YouTube video on the place here. We landed in Paphos, waited about 90 minutes for a hire car (I never usually use Avis, but I was using my airmiles to book it. So bad. Always use Hertz!) and then you have to drive across the island for about an hour to the North shore. Argaka is a tiny town with a pebble beach. Our villa was down a dirt track, through orange and olive groves and located halfway up a hill. A couple of times we didn’t think our little Mitsubishi Colt would make it!
This isn’t a post full of restaurant reviews and recommendations, because- in all honesty- I left this villa once, to get our first stock of food and drink. We cooked every night, slept in everyday and lay around the pool reading all day long. I can, however, give you a summary of the books I read during the week:
Mr Nice by Howard Marks: a fascinating insight into the world of an international hashish smuggler and life in US federal prison. I also learned a little bit more than I needed to know about the special “extras” involved from massage parlours in Hong Kong. Overall, I really enjoyed this book. Although, I was left feeling that perhaps others had put their Oxford education to better use than I…
How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran: I loved “How to be a Woman” and “Moranthology“. This book is fictional (or is it?) but largely follows the same themes as “How to be a Woman”. In the back of the book she even apologises to her own siblings for writing yet another book about sex and masturbation. It’s light hearted and if I was in to early 90s indie music, I am sure it would reflect that period of time as a music journalist. One quote sticks with me. It’s about mulberry jam. Read it if you want to know why.
Eat, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss: a re-read, just to keep updated. As you can tell from the grammar of this post, I did not adhere to all it taught. Her enraged passion for apostrophes is contagious though.
Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins: it has remained half read on my Kindle for months. So I finished it off. I think we all know how it goes.
Freakonomics by Stephen D Levitt and Stephen J Dubnar: Easily the best book I have read this year. Utterly fascinating. Lots of Chicago examples, which I loved, but overall it is a phenomenal book that challenges how you think. I love data: I spend much of my day analysing and making decisions using it. This book urges you to think slightly differently and perhaps find another rationale for something- or another route to take. I loved it. Superfreakonomics is also fascinating.
The Sunrise by Victoria Hislop: Holiday reading. I have read The Return, when in Spain (easily the best one), The Island, when in Corfu (and learned a lot about Leprosy) and now The Sunrise in Cyprus. It was certainly educational in terms of helping me understand the Greek/Turkish split of Cyprus. Also, I am fascinated by ghost towns, and the novel is based in the 1970s in a town called Famagusta that was then abandoned, and remains abandoned to this day. Google it. It’s not high brow literature, by any stretch, but it’s nice to read a bit of easy fiction set where you are reading it.
I saved “Grey” by E L James for the end of the week. I have still only read the first 100 pages. Maybe I have matured. Or maybe the book is just awful. If you have read the first 3, remember how- after a while- it was infuriating that she KEPT biting her lip? And he was obsessed with forcing her to eat meals? Well, that’s all there. However, in addition, there is the overuse of the word “twitching”. I put the book down and I haven’t picked it up since I returned. Too much twitching for my liking.
