Today’s trip north of the border to Famagusta is the one we intended to take two weeks ago, postponed because Jane had a minor encounter with a post, necessitating car repairs. So first stop is coffee in the old walled city, one of my favourite places in the world. Interesting discrepancy in the menu prices here. The official rate of exchange is almost exactly 6 Turkish lira to the euro. Menu lists items in both lira and euros, but the price if you pay in euros is more than 50 percent above what the exchange rate would have dictated. Presumably the assumption is that tourists either won’t know or won’t care. The Turkish lira has fluctuated pretty wildly, varying from about 4.5 to 7.5 to the euro over the past year and making life very difficult for people, but this does seem excessive. We pay in lira. The cash machine charges 6% on a withdrawal from a foreign currency source, but with this sort of differential it would soon be made up.
Then a visit to Fehmy, our dentist. Visits, oddly enough a pleasure. He’s a lovely person - calm, sensitive, talkative, with a wide range of interests, including photography, music, and history. And a good dentist. His dental surgery is actually in the room he was born in. Lunch in the old city and then we visit the Thursday market. Fehmy’s wife Filiz had said that the market was open until evening, and surprisingly there seem to be as many people here in mid-afternoon as there usually are at ten in the morning. Always such a sensual delight. Dark clouds almost above us, but it doesn’t rain before evening.