As we had to be at the Gatwick check in at 5am this morning, we spent the previous night in a hotel at the airport. I hadn’t realised that there were hotels actually in the airport, but I booked us into one just across the road from the terminal, so that was a great success. We still had to wake up at 4.30 am, but we were checking in by 5, since it took us less than 5 minutes from bedroom to check in!
We cleared security and just had time to have breakfast before it was time to embark on the usual route march to the departure gate. Once in the plane, we did not take off though. The plane had a problem with one of the doors, and first an engineer had to be summoned to examine it, and then a team of engineers had to be called to come and fix it. So we were more than an hour late taking off. It was 5 and a half hours after getting into the plane that we finally arrived in Paphos. The weather was delightful, clear and sunny and warm so we took our coats off immediately! We had to put them back on later as the air-conditioning on the coach was so cold.
We had to wait for another flight to arrive, and then we were off for what we expected to be a 2 hour journey to Kyrenia, but proved to be around 3 hours because of the heavy traffic. We drove through the lovely sunshine and were able to see how dry everything was. Our guide warned us to drink only bottled water, as the tap water is not for drinking. Apparently, there will be bottled water in our room and we even have to use it in the kettle if we make coffee.
The Greek part of Cyprus is bustling and full of building projects, usually using EU grants, but our guide pointed out that we would find things very different in the Turkish part, where there is far less money.
We are staying in a very nice hotel, in a very smart room. Paul claims to feel quite intimidated, I think he would far prefer to be in some student accommodation somewhere. Tomorrow, we will be having a tour of Kyrenia, so there should be some photos.
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