One of the most amazing restaurant experiences of my life happened in Northern Cyprus during my stay in the island. One of the METU NCC faculty members' originally from cyprus, arranges bi-weekly hiking trips for university's staff, on the 29th of March, gathering together at 8.45 "island time" (meaning 9-ish), we left the campus for Yeşilirmak , a village near the town of Lefke for a hike' lunch and strawberry picking.
When we got to the beginning point of Limnidi trail in Yeşilirmak around 9.45, we had to wait for almost half an hour for other groups of hikers to join us. Everyone parked their car in the parking area and after listening to some speeches from the restaurant's manager and the mayor of the city, chose from the difficult and very difficult road options. Although the official guides ranked the difficulty of the road as orta or moderate, they trail was more difficult than that, but of course, not impossible. The guide advised the first option, therefore, everyone took the safer path.
I think the road was designed to make everyone as hungry as possible by the time they get to the restaurant :) The length of the road was approximately 10 k.m and was estimated to finish between 3 to 4 hours but with the many stops on the way it ended up being a bit more. The hardest part was the beginning and it became a lot easier after the first hour.
There were many interesting moments in the walk, two of which stood out the most. First was the the shrine for burning the olive tree leaves. Long ago, the king of Cyprus had sent his sick daughter to this part of the island to die, but searching for her after a year, found out that she was completely healthy, later believed to be for the effect of water coming through the mountains in the area. A shrine was put over there and when there is a passerby, they usually burn some olive leaves there to try to keep the evil eyes away.
Second was going through the very beautiful and sometimes special flowers of the islands, specially the arpa Çiçek, which we were told were specific to the island.
About 5 hours after the start line we finally reached Vuni king restaurant and were greeted by the staff with some Turkish coffee. I could not believe the number of costumers and the size of the restaurant. It was bigger than the campus' main cafeteria! Starting with the tradition of Mezze or appetizers including yogurt, humus, olives, etc., we eagerly awaited our roasted chickens. It was as delicious as chicken can get ,of course it has to be taken into consideration that the starvation caused by the long walk helped the taste! When done, we were given some Turkish coffee and directed to an arranged sync dancing program staring children as young as 7 to adults.
After the dance program by the sea, we returned to the restaurant for another cup of coffee and moved to strawberry farms and picked some. The process was tiring, time-consuming, tedious and totally WORTH it. The fresh strawberries in the photo are living proof of that.
We had another Turkish coffee before the drivers went back to the parking lot with the restaurant service provided for this purpose. When they returned we had another coffee and left the place just after, you guessed correctly, one more Turkish coffee.
The experience is definitely recommended for anyone who ever gets the chance to be in the north-west of the island.
Finally, many thanks to my great friend for most of the photos. Technically, she is as great as a friend gets :D
