ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!!!

One day Kathleen asked me what I wanted to do. I said I had seen a post card of the Kykkos Monastery with all it's gilded icons and I wanted to try to find it. The monastery was up in the high mountains of Cyprus. We got out our trusty map and started out.

Now, you need to understand something about Cyprus maps - they have two kinds of roads: orange and yellow. DO NOT DRIVE ON ANYTHING BY ORANGE ROADS!

We decided to take the more direct yellow route and ended up on mountain roads that, well.... Let's just say the phrase 'falling into the abyss' took on an all too real meaning in some cases. We did make it to the monastery. It took over two hours and when we recounted the names of the names of the towns we had passed through we certainly hadn't been on the road we thought we were on. I was so flustered and exhausted that I completely forgot to get my camera out of the car. So I have no pictures of the Monastery. You'll have to look it up on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kykkos_monastery).

Instead this is what I DO have pictures of...
Yes, that's right! On my lovely 'let's get away from the cold and damp of Scotland' holiday - I end up on Mt. Olympus surrounded by umpteen feeeeeeeet of snow! I made Kathleen drive back down the mountain and I, in my role of Navi-guesser kept us on only Orange Roads.

Just as I was about to say, "You'd think, with all this snow they'd have a ski area or something!" we came around a bend in the road to this view. No parking lot, just cars parked on the side of the road and a lift that disappeared into the clouds.

Kathleen made me get the icicle shot.

I haven't seen snowbanks this high since the Blizzard of '78!

OK it WAS beautiful!