Food, Food, Glorious Food!

So, several of these pitcures I may have already posted, but I thought it would be fun to have a post of just all the wonderful food!

The market

Dessert at a fancy restaraunt buffet we went to as a group (all 45+ of us!)

Ice cream galore =)

Traditional foods of the mountain villages

Dried fruit (which was all deliscious!): kiwi, mango, strawberries, figs, and pineapple

Carmelized nuts-these are so yummy, I am going to miss them when I go home!

My first Meze-Meze is a dinner, where over the course of the night you try all sorts of different traditional Cypriot foods. Above are olives, houlomi cheese (which is a BIG deal here), sausages, tahini and taziki sauces, pita, a basic salad (with olive oil, vinigar, salt and pepper). Below are herbed fries, and a plateful of meats kebabs-chickens, pork, lamb. It is more of an interesting meal I would say, many of the flavors were very unusual to me and not quite my favorite, but a great experience nonetheless! 

Cyprus Delights

Zorbas =)

This is a traditional "sweet"-which if you have been paying attention, anything that is a "sweet" here is typically not really sweet- it is walnuts dunked in sugary grape juice over the course of a year. They are actually pretty good-but more as a healthy snack than something comparable to a dessert.

More Cypriot Delights

Houlimi and tomato pita sandwich

Something like beef stew

This looks deliscious and is something like eggy lasagna, and was actually disgusting

This is a very traditional welcome "sweet" which is the most digusting thing I have ever consumed (even worse than rose water flavored things). At this point, we had learned this was gross, so acted out our disgust below:

Zorbas! Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed, so I only got a few before I discovered this rule!

In Cyprus we have "frappes" (pronounced "frap-A's"), they are a frothy, coffee, amazingly scrumptious drink that are only 2E and don't make you go to the bathroom as a bonus!

Below is a series of pictures of me enjoying the lemon trees on the sidewalk (which will never get old to me):

Olives in the middle of town

Crepa Land! Crapes whenerv you want AND they deliver of course! They are so good-meat crapes, banana and chocolate crapes, starberry and white chocolate crapes

Gloria Jeans- a lovely reminder of home when you need to just "get away." The menu is in English, everything is what you would expect at a US one, and the place is stocked full of comfy sofas and lounge chairs so you can sit and de-culture shock for an hour or two with some friends.

And they even have my favorite drink from there- a mint chocolate bomb!

Now these are true Turkish Delights bought in the North and were so good! I wish I had boxes more to bring home for everyone, but 1) I would have to go back to the North unocompanied by the safety of GLS and 2) they wouldn't make it far because they are too good, but I will definitely bring some Cypriot Delight which is accessible and tasty, too.

Zorbas of course!