By dolmuş to Girne on errands, the first of which is to change the Canadian money remaining in my purse to Turkish lira. Wondering how to say bureau de change in Turkish and it occurs to me that I do not actually know how to say it in English. Turns out that Google Translate has the same difficulty and gives the English as - bureau de change. Does provide the Turkish though - döviz bürosu.
There are several of them, including four tripping over each other on a main street going down toward the harbour. The first three give precisely the same quote, amounting to 22 lira to the Canadian dollar. I would have guessed at that point that any other exchange would be the same, but J points out reasonably that the fourth is hardly any distance further and sure enough they come up with 23 lira to the dollar. Do learn to say Canada dollar instead of Canadian. The long a and an accent on the second syllable make it almost impossible for many speakers of other languages to understand the adjective.
The harbour front has been renovated at length - actually at more length than originally planned as with many major projects. It is cleaner and brighter and the pathways are safer. Think that there had been infrastructure problems that needed solving as well. Medieval harbours not best designed to accommodate modern water supply and electricity. To some degree response of visitors has depended on whether they are new to the place or fell in love with its earlier incarnation, a bit down at heel but a part of history. We first stayed here twenty-four years ago, long before central Girne was full of new buildings, expensive chains, and Mercedes Benzes. Almost no tourists here midwinter then either. Doner kebabs virtually unknown. We ate traditional food at tiny cafés, choosing by the time-honoured method of pointing at whatever basins had taken our fancy. The waterfront did have old benches and we were among the few people using them in winter. We used to take books down to read there - probably warmer and with better light than our room.
Today it is bright and busy. Families and couples enjoying the sunshine. Hard to tell if the restaurants are busy and there have been complaints that the prices are inflated. We are not likely to find out as this is really tourist territory. Lovely to see a couple of young teenage boys with their fishing rods. Have no idea what their odds are but they seem to be taking it seriously. Presumably the boys are local so wonder why they are not in school in the early afternoon, but state schools usually start early but finish at lunchtime three days a week so that may explain it.
Stop at Mr Pound on the way back. Any link to the pound a bit tenuous but there is in fact only one price in the shop. Everything is 60 lira (£1.35, $2.45 CAD), tax included of course. Some things seem to be an amazing bargain. A pruning saw, for example. Chinese, of course, and not state of the art, but still. Others not so much. Suspect you could do better on small plates if you were not buying them as singles. J does not badly on a pair of reading glasses though.
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