Newbies in North Cyprus, Day 2

Day 2: Wednesday

I love villa holidays, especially spending the first morning exploring what our villa has to offer. After breakfast on the terrace in the warm sunshine (what a treat after chilly UK summer mornings), I spent a happy hour opening cupboards, and discovering the amazing amount of useful things our North Cyprus villa was equipped with. There were plenty of pots and pans in the spacious kitchen, ready for us to cook fresh North Cyprus produce. A large plastic box by the lovely pool revealed a selection of inflatable pool games to keep us amused for hours, so of course we had to try those out asap. The large collection of DVDs provided proved invaluable for those evenings where we didn't want to go out, or just chill out.

Our Amy Villas rep arrived, just to check everything was okay, shortly followed by our rental car delivery from Pacific Rentals. Soon, we were driving our shiny red North Cyprus rental car (with very efficient air conditioning and a half tank of petrol) towards Kyrenia and the supermarkets. If there's one thing I love more than poking my nose into rental villa cupboards, it's exploring the wonders of foreign supermarkets.

You can tell a lot from a country by its supermarkets. We stopped at the first major supermarket we came across, Tempo, and gratefully stepped into its air-conditioning. Everything we needed was here, including fresh meat from the butcher's counter, a vast selection of local and imported wines, and a mouthwatering selection of fresh Turkish Cypriots pastries including my absolute favourite, baklava. Soon our trolley was brimming with tasty treats for the week, including olives, local whites cheese, and soft, fresh pitta breads still warm from the oven. Here, too, were plenty of British goods, so we were able to get a box of British breakfast cereal, often tricky to find in the Mediterranean.

The North Cyprus villa information pack thoughtfully provided by Amy Villas contained excellent information on where to shop locally. So we knew to cross the road from Tempo in Catalkoy to the "Ya Beles" stall for farm-free local produce. Red ripe tomatoes fresh from the fields, still with dust clinging to them, were piled high, alongside a massive choice of local grown produce from limes to lettuce, onions to kiwis. Much of this produce had been grown within 5km of the stall and even as we shopped, a new load of fresh vegetables arrived on the back of a pickup truck, bouncing its way across the forecourt to the stall. For the equivalent of £15, we bought more vegetables than we could carry, including a massive watermelon, sweet local grapes, ruby red peppers, and a bag full of tiny cucumbers, which I had mistaken for courgettes!

What better ends could there be to our first day than to relax beside our own North Cyprus villa pool, glass of wine in hand, and soak up the stillness of the night air. Bliss!