Places You Must Go This Spring: part 2

Here are three more fragrant, flower- filled places you should spend some time in this spring. See my previous post for three more heady destination ideas and the post before that for my criteria for selecting these aromatic spots:
3) SYRIA – in the mountains behind the seaside town of Tartus, on the way to delightful Safita (itself a village of twisting lanes and cobblestone alleys dominated by a splendid Crusader keep) and Mishtayeh (with its handsome stone buildings), you’ll find quintessentially Mediterranean scenery of olive groves and citrus orchards, woods of pine trees, ramshackle stone houses with terraces shaded with grape vines and gardens grown wild with tangles of bouganvillea, jasmine, oleander, and cactus.
4) SICILY – in spring the interior of the island is blanketed with wildflowers, especially in the wild Madonie mountains near Cefalu where you can inhale the aromatic air as you walk old shepherd’s routes. As you drive through the picturesque landscapes around Siracusa and between the hill towns of Ragusa and Noto, with their beautiful baroque architecture, you’ll see an abundance of flowers by the roadside.
5) CYPRUS – the whole countryside is stunning, covered with fields of yellow mustard flowers in spring, but you’ll see kaleidoscopic colours in the more remote, pristine Karpaz peninsula (in Northern Cyprus), home to bucolic farmland and windswept sandy beaches, and the beautiful Arkamas peninsula (in the Republic of Cyprus) with its pine-covered hills and rocky coastline.