February 3/2009

Sunny with high close to 20. Walk out to Orphanides supermarket, nting flats to let. Seems any clean and modern flat is described as "luxury" in Cyprus. According to the Sunday paper the tourist trade will shortly be in major difficulty (last Sunday's headline: Hoteliers told drop rates or face disaster). this is linked to the world financial problems, particularly the drop in value of sterling (half the tourist business is UK). It's also linked to price increases in Cyprus that seem well beyond those reflecting the strength of the euro and, ironically, to deliberate government policy to lower the number of low cost tourist beds in the hope that they wil be replaced with higher cost places attracting a better class of tourist. Instead of the more desirable tourist appearing in large numbers, they have been shocked to find that companies have been considering Turkey and Egypt better value for money. It's a year or two back now that we read a letter to the Cyprus Weekly saying how much more tourists paid to visit Monaca - and wondered if the writer had ever been to Monaco and nted things like the modern plumbing (most Cypriot and Greek plumbing won't take toilet paper due to ridiculously narrow pipe diameter) and sidewalks free of broken paving stones and misparked cars.

And when we reach Orphanides I notice that the price of salad greens, admittedly not an expensive item in Cyprus, has risen from 15 Cypriot cents a bunch (24 euro cents) to 35 euro cents since last year, a 46% increase.