Cyprus

Luckily we went and came back before the country's planes were grounded following the volcanoe erruption in Iceland, causing a huge dust cloud (allegedly) over UK. I say allegedly because for the last 3 days we have had beautiful blue skies, warm weather, no glorious sun sets (well any more glorious than Mr J Turner painted) and not a spot of dust on our cars.

Anyway we had a lovely chilled out time and are happy to be back.

This week has also been a bit layed back despite the mounds of holiday washing, cleaning the dusty house, and catching up with the seed planting and potting up in the greenhouse.

Today I had a treat. Ollie was working (one of the 2 saturday's a year he has to go in) and so I got to have a mummy and Kelly day. She had sent me a gold network card so it didnt cost too much for me to travel up by train to Bromely South, and meet up with her there for a day of shopping and lunch out. I say lunch out as we ended up sitting on the wall of the train station's car park eating a 6" subway and drinking a bottle of water each.

I had already been out buying lots of summer stuff for my week in Cyprus but we have also now been invited to join Kelly and Ollie in a villa on Lanzerote for a week in June, so Kelly needed lots of stuff for her suitcase. I bought a couple of necklaces and bracelets to accessorise my wardrobe whilst she hit the shelves of primart.

Thank you Kelly, I had a lovely mummy and daughter day. xx


Cyprus
Sunday
Trust us to choose a bank holiday Sunday to travel! Actually it was quite good as the roads were fairly empty, the queues at the check in were short and fast, and there weren't too many people in 'spoons so we got our pre-flight brunch quickly. The flight was smooth and it was nice to get those little luxuries as part of the flight not as extra's (its years since I went on a flight giving out free peanuts with the free drinks).

We collected the hire car ((although I am still convinced we were conned on the price) and we were freely upgraded from a Ford Focus to something much larger and Martin was more than pleased that all the luggage fitted our 6 seater.

We lost 2 hours in the time zones which made it seem a long day, leaving home at just 9 am and arriving just after 8pm local time, and we still had quite a long drive (about an hour and a half) to find the villa. But it was mainly straight motorway, and even at the end of the journey the directions were straightfoward and got us there easily., especially since we ignored the helpful English guy in the carpark who told us it was best to leave the motor way 30 miles before we needed to, and follow the much longer, winding coast road!

We managed to find a 24 kiosk type shop open and stocked up on a few essentials (although they had no bread) and in fact the only hic-up was that once we had opened the safe, got the keys out and entered the villa, the alarm started to peel........ very loudly! Of course no one had mentioned an alarm to us, and it took Laura and Martin some time to locate the main switch and through a lucky guess at the code number, shut it off.

There was water, wine, juice and milk already in the fridge, but we stuck with tradition and headed for the local bar for an end of travel day drink. Since the main strip was only 2 mins walk away it was no hussle to dump the suitcases and stroll up the hill.

Our 'local' The Blazing Saddles Coral Bay

Monday
Next morning dawned bright and sunny, and we discovered the villa had lovely sea views. It was still a national holiday so with little stock in the cupboards we were forced to go back to the bar for a rather late full english (which was a lovely chilled out way to start the day) before venturing out to find a supermarket that was open. Although there was a really big one in the next road which we strolled over to, that was shut for the holidays. In fact we had to take the car further afield before we finally found someone trading, and he wanted £3 for a frozen loaf of Kingsmill.

We did stock up a bit there, but def. not with bread!! After that we did the unpacking, and hit the patio with our books, our music and our suncream to chill out by the pool.

Chillin'

Later in the afternoon it was even hot enough to venture into the pool.

A fully working waterfall too!

This was unheated so was a bit of a shock to the system when you first put your toes in, but was well worth the effort and lots of fun. Around 4 pm we got the car out and drove down to Paphos harbour area. To us it seemed too much like Margate/Ramsgate, with little going for it. There were a few characature artists and some stalls selling jewellry but mostly it was bars and restaurants, and not much else. Living on the doorstep to Dover castle also made this a little insignificant.

Paphos castle

Still the ice-creams were welcome.

First cone of the year. Yummy!

Still in an exploritory mood we drove in the other direction from Coral Bay village to have a bit of a peek at Coral Bay beach. Catching it just at the right time we were able to enjoy the sunset over the sweeping coastline, from the cliftop bar as we enjoyed a drink.

Coral bay beach

The strip in Coral Bay Village is chocka with restaurants and bars, so it took us quite a while to choose were to eat that evening. Eventually we settled, and had a so-so 2 course meal which came to £70 for the four of us. It struck us that the exchange rate on the euro wasnt going to do us any favours and eating out was going to be a tad expensive.