CYPRUS

We were very glad to land in Larnaca. It was a short 45 minute flight from Tel Aviv. It was also very nice to be back in saner climes. Immigration was a breeze as we’re back in the EU. Cyprus was a pleasant surprise. The weather was beautiful – only got cold at night. It was also the cheapest place we went on this trip! Our accommodation for 5 nights came to a grand total of €199 for a large, nicely and tastefully decorated 3 bedroom apartment. Our car hire, a 7 seater Renault was €142 for 4 days. Food was relatively cheap. There’s a LIDL! and the Alpha Omega seemed to be the Cyprus arm of TESCO so we had the comforts of home too. We booked our accommodation in Limassol about an hour’s drive south of Larnaca. Onyaidu – my sister – yes, she and one of my twins share the same name and no, my Onyaidu was not named after my sister. They were both named after my great grand mother. I digress. Onyaidu snr lives in Nicosia and met us at the airport. It was good to see her after 4+ years! Of course the girls didn’t know her and Agaba did not remember her either! He last saw her when he was 14 months old. Anyway, they all quickly re-acquainted themselves. I was still on driver duties. Someone who shall remain unnamed had acquired a taste for being chauffeured around.

We had planned to spend just 4 days in Cyprus but thanks to our horrible experience in Israel, we decided to buy new tickets from Larnaca to Amman and bypass Israel. Our original plan was to return to Israel and travel to the Allenby Bridge to cross over back to Jordan and spend a day and a night exploring Amman before flying to Dubai. Our revised plan – cost us (£500/$1000 for new last minute tickets) means we would fly to Amman and catch the onward flight to Dubai the same day. With this agreed and planned out, we settled to enjoy the next few days!

We spent the next 4 days lounging about and exploring.

Cyprus is full of Roman ruins and has a lot of roman history but our first stop was the Cat Monastery just outside Limassol. We didn’t see any monks but there were lots of cats!

We couldn’t see something like this and not head there! We have cat lovers in the family. None on this trip mind you

As it was winter, quite a few tourist places were closed but the whole outdoors was open to us anyway! We went to Episkopi, Kouklia, Paphos, up Mount Olympos at Troodos (it was freezing!), Omodos (our favourite place), Platres, Nicosia and Larnaca. The distances are short enough that it’s not a lot of travel. Troodos was the furthest we travelled in a day and that was just over a 90 minutes drive each way.