En Vacances
Cyprus, with Natalie, was a week of pure relaxation. Our flight out was delayed by 2 hours so having arrived at Gatwick at 7am, we remained there until 12.30pm! Still, it gave us time to eat breakfast and buy matching t-shirts from French Connection which bear the slogan “mile high fcuk”. Our apartment was spacious and clean, the pool was just the right temperature in which to cool off, the staff were lovely, as were most of the other guests. We went on a cruise around the Cypriot coast, swam in the sea and snorkeled with the fishes. There was a barbecue lunch on board and we lay on the sundeck browning ourselves. What was truly amazing was that the ship’s capacity was 50 but there were just 6 of us on it. Like our own private boat. One evening, we had planned to cook a jacket potato, but when we cut it open, there was a large hole in the middle, mouldy as though it had been eaten from the inside outwards. We threw it away and went in search of a cheap restaurant. Mikki’s Tavern, we thought looked nice but alas, Nat’s ravioli was not served in tomato sauce but in watery oil which had been dyed red. My cannelloni, which I had expected to be filled with spinach and cheese, and come in tomato sauce, possibly with a layer of baked cheese on top, was filled with cinnamon flavoured mince-meat and came with a layer of burnt on tomato on top. No sauce. We spent the week with no fresh bread, the loaf we bought was already stale. The loaf of Hovis we left on the supermarket shelf, as it would have set us back £7.50!!! We made a video for midnitevulture, mykeysan, Tom P and Tom H, using Nat’s camcorder. It is mad and funny. One day, we took the local bus to Paphos. The hour’s drive was quite pleasant considering that the bus looked as though it would fall to pieces at any second. Having no map, we wandered in a random direction and somehow found the shopping area, where we got souvenirs for our families and for the guys. There was much girl talk. I am tanned from the sun. On the final night, we went to the barbecue held at the apartments. The food was yummy and we met a nice young couple who informed us that we hadn’t missed much by not going to the discos in Polis, of which there were two. The one with the big neon sign which looked nice was permanently closed, and the other was a brothel purporting to be a disco. We (well ok, I) drank with this couple, Lerou and Tara, and we played pool and cards until about 1am. An incredibly inebriated mancunian girl named Chez joined us at cards and we took photos. Twas fun. At that time, there were madly drunken Scotsmen running around shouting triumphant things about football but we never did figure out who had been playing who. Tired, the journey home was not bad at all. Our flight took off half an hour early but we spent 1 hour hovering over Gatwick due to queues for the runway. During this hour Nat looked at me with an expression of impatient and almost demented excitement, saying over and over again “I’m going to see my Mikey soon!” Indeed, he came with Nat’s dad to meet us at the airport, which was cute.