Whenever someone visits us in Abu Dhabi, I try to get them to a local soccer match. As I have noted before. For one, it’s free. Also, the crowd will be overwhelmingly Emirati, and the way that crowd reacts is a revelation, too, to visitors who typically spend their days in crowds of expatriates. Which […]

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So, on Cyprus Day 6, we headed back to Larnaca and the country’s “big” airport. Larnaca seems a world away from Limassol, but it is barely 60 miles. As the day developed, the temperatures moved into the high 60s. After overnight lows of about 52. A strong sun overhead, the placid Mediterranean Sea, dark blue […]

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You visit a country you like, that you find interesting, one that doesn’t seem too expensive, with a decent climate … What do you do? You consider living there. Especially if you are of a certain age. Such has been the case here in Cyprus after four days. Sun shining, hundreds of miles of seashore, […]

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Of all the things the British could have left behind, in Cyprus: The awful habit of driving on the left side of a street. Cyprus is one of four countries in Europe that has the driver on the right side of the car, and the car in the left lane. The other three?

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Nicosia is probably best known, among soccer fans, as the home of the Cypriot club Apoel, which made the quarterfinals of the 2011-12 Uefa Champions League. Among tourists, Nicosia probably is known for being the planet’s last divided capital city. A sort of post-Cold War Berlin Lite. Complete with passport scrutiny, a dead zone and […]

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This is not the best-planned vacation in the history of tourism. It hardly extended beyond “plane flights, rental car, hotel”. And figure out the rest on site. We knew the hotel was near Limassol, the second-biggest city in Cyprus, and we figured we would go over there sooner than later … but that was about […]

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Greek is a tough language. Different alphabet, not spoken by many people, with no living linguistic relatives, impossible to read for anyone who speaks a Western European language. So far, I can speak one word of Greek, and it is in the headline, above. “Yassas” … which is an informal “hello” but apparently can also […]

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Talking Abu Dhabi the emirate, now. The big city has the same name as the emirate, but the emirate has one other major population center … and that is Al Ain. Al Ain is perhaps best known, in the region, as the home of the UAE’s most decorated soccer team. Eleven league championships, one Asian […]

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A business story. Ugh. But the business of the UAE is business. Commodities and services and tourism and all the rest of it. The National has a 12-page business section, broadsheet, and the biz crew has no trouble filling it. Something is always going on. The big biz news story for months now has been […]

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A key part of the Volvo Ocean Race are the stops they make along the round-the-world, 39,000-nautical-miles-sailing part of it. When an ocean event gets a chance to sell itself to landlubbers. The organizers pack up and ship a race-themed village to each of the major stops around the world, and the six-boat fleet has […]

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