Cyprus and Israel. Finally.

B-O-R-I-N-G.

That describes my life the past couple of days.  I truly have nothing worth blogging about.  So I will finally talk about my trip to Cyprus, Egypt and Israel which I told y'all I was going to blog about approximately a gazillion years ago.

This is going to be photo heavy mainly because this trip took place back at Christmas/New Year's of 1995/1996 and if my math is correct that was a lot of years ago and I'm old now and my memory ain't that great.  But I do remember I went to those countries.  I'm not THAT old.

I should tell you that this was way before digital photos so what I did was this:  I took photos out of my photo album and took photos of them on my iPhone and then downloaded them.  So what these photos are is high quality, y'all.  And I wish I could say photos a few more times.  Photos.  Photos.  Photos.

You will also get to see photos of my ex-husband.  I don't think he'll ever see them on here because I have no reason to believe he is stalking me online and that there is any chance he's found out I have a blog after being divorced for 9 years (except I did see that he had looked at my Linked In profile a few months ago).  I don't even understand how to use Linked In so I'm not sure why I'm on there. 

Anyway, he worked for a company that I will keep secret and they sent him to Nicosia, Cyprus for a little over a year.  He left in August of '95 and asked me to come over for a couple of weeks for the holidays.  It was the first time I wasn't with my family for Christmas and it was kind of weird.

I left Atlanta on a Friday night, had a layover in Switzerland for a while and arrived in Nicosia on Saturday afternoon which was the day before Christmas Eve.  I didn't know this so maybe some of y'all don't know this either, but Cyprus is not part of Greece even though a lot of people seem to think it is.  It is actually near Turkey and Syria.  It was at one point a Greek colony, but it went through being a part of several different empires, it was ruled by Italy for a while, Turkey for a while, and it was British for a while.  In 1960 they declared themselves independent.  Then in 1974, Turkey launched a military invasion and took part of the country from them and then stopped because they had shown they could do it.  So now part of the island is Cypriot and part of it is Turkish.  Apparently the Turkish side is the prettiest part but I never made it to that side.  They have a green line which is basically piles of sandbags where the military for each country just hang out.  My ex and I walked to the green line one afternoon and that's all it is.

While I was there, we went to a Christmas Eve party at a hotel up in the Troodos Mountains.  It was kind of foggy up in the mountains:

 We went to the party that night and this is my ex and I:

 We met a very nice Scottish couple at the party and I tried really hard to understand them when they spoke.  They had heavy Scottish accents and they were drunk so it was a bit of a challenge:

 After the party was over, my ex and I went up to our room and I took my shoes off.  And then I reached up under my dress and whipped off my uncomfortable as heck pantyhose.  And he had taken off his shirt and tie.  And I may have been a little bit drunk and I looked at him and said, "So, are you ever going to propose to me?" because we had dated way back in the 80s in high school and this go 'round we had been dating for almost 3 years and I was kind of wondering and apparently when we were drunk, half-dressed, and sitting in a hotel room on top of Mount Olympus on the island of Cyprus in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea it seemed like that was a perfect time to ask.

He looked at me and said, "Okay.  Will you marry me?"

I responded, "Yes."

And then we just kind of sat there.  So I said, "Is that it?  Just like that we're engaged now?" because it was just about the least exciting moment of my life.

"That's it.  We're engaged," he replied.  He then said he was planning to ask me before I went back home but he really hadn't planned on it being at that exact moment so he didn't have a ring but would get me one before I left.  And he did.

Then we both went to sleep.  Honest to goodness, that is my exciting marriage proposal story.

I had jet lag still and was awake for pretty much every single sunrise the entire two weeks I was over there.  So while he slept one morning, I went out on the balcony and took pictures of the sunrise in the fog:

 And then I took some more pictures later after the fog had lifted:

 On Christmas Day, we went back down the mountain and a friend of his had invited us to their home for the holiday.  They had some weird food (their "dressing" was rice with cranberries and tiny pieces of liver in it.  Gag.).  Unfortunately, they also had a couple of inside dogs and I'm deathly allergic so my ex and I spent a lot of time walking up and down their street so that I could breathe and not die.

Then we drove back up the mountain to spend Christmas night in the hotel again.  The entire country is about the size of Rhode Island so this wasn't a long drive.

A couple of days later, the ex surprised me and told me we were going on a cruise to Egypt and Israel!  We were poor and he booked the cruise kind of last minute so we had a room way down deep in the belly of the ship.  And it was kind of tiny.  And we had to use a community bathroom down the hall.  Seriously, here is a photo of me with my arms spread from one side of the cabin to the bunk bed which was as far as I could spread my arms:

My EMPTY hanging bag would not fit in the "closet" so we put all of our stuff on the top bunk and squeezed ourselves into the bottom bunk each night.

But you know what?  We had a blast.  We didn't spend much time in our cabin anyway.

We were too busy getting picked out of the audience in the lounge to play musical hats.  Ex lost to a guy named Wally from England who was celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary.

 The cruise director heard ex say he was from the U.S. (honest to goodness a gasp was heard from the crowd when he said it) and came to our table after musical hats to talk to us.  He told us we were the only Americans on the entire ship and that it was rare for Americans to go on Cypriot cruises.  It turns out the cruise director had a very good friend who my ex was training to take over for him when he came back to the U.S.  What a small world!  He gave us free champagne, told us the best souvenirs to get on our stops, etc.  He kind of took us under his wing.

The first stop was Israel.  The PLO had just taken over the week before.

 We went to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.  And if you ever go, I would suggest not going TWO DAYS AFTER CHRISTMAS because it's kind of crowded and annoying (it's also decorated a bit gaudy if you ask me):

The site of the manger:

 We went to the Wailing Wall as well and I wish my ex would have liked wearing his jeans a little tighter:

 There is an Australian guy (I think that's where they said he's from) and he stands near the Wailing Wall and preaches and sing and plays a harp type of thing:

 Here are some gardens where Jesus hung out a lot:

  Then we got back on our tour buses and drove to the Old City of Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified.  It was kind of crowded there too:

Supposedly, this hole is where the cross was:

It's up under this altar where Meryl Streep was hanging out.  Seriously, doesn't she kind of look like Meryl?  Anyway, you had to climb up under this altar to take the picture above of the hole where the cross was:

Crowded, I tell you.  There was some incredible artwork:

This was the stone they laid his body on after the crucifixion:

 

We had purchased some crucifixes and they said we could put them on the stone to have them blessed.  Apparently my ridiculous ex thought he needed his sunglasses blessed as well:

We then got to see where the tomb was.  It's inside of this:

Once you enter that "room," you had to kneel down and this was where the tomb was:

Unfortunately, this is all I have time to write today.  I will blog about Egypt and the crazy New Year's Eve we had next week.

Y'all have a great weekend!