Year: 2003

Last day of holidays. Breakfast in the hotel, swimming pool, pictures – all as usual. Then packing and checking out of the hotel. After that a trip to Akamas Peninsula again and “last castle” taverna with outstanding pork and house wine.

Lara bay beach again. Trip back to Paphos. Switching cars and a trip back to Limassol. Hazard asked us to remind him sometime later on that he actually likes vacations and should do it more often. :)

In Limassol, everyone looked sleepy, so I left them and went to meet with my former classmate Yury Babinkov. Dinner at Cleopatra with nargile, then few beers in 127. And that’s the end of the day.

Today’s morning part is like yesterday’s. Adventures though are relocated back to Akamas Peninsula (and more specifically Lara Bay beach), which proved to have best places for rest and leasure. :)

We spent food time at the Lara Bay restaurant, which was not shy enough to put “C-Class restaurant” string on top of it’s menus. And there is nothing to be shy, when you are actually a D-Class restaurant. :) Well, I’ve to give it that – it’s nicely placed on small hill just on the shore of the sea. But apart from that everything stinks. Service is close to none: you’ll have to pick up the menus from the bar yourself and then you’ll use a strange set of gestures to attract the attention of the person closest to the waiter so that he could pass on the message. Food is eatable but not better then that. We were advised to have some pork souvla, which was said to be surprisingly good today, but showed up to be the worst pieces of pork overdone on fire that I ever had. And that’s not it. There are 2 adult dogs with 3 almost adult puppies and an adult cat with 3 or 4 almost adult kittens. Disclaimer: I have nothing against animals in general. But when they bark at you for not giving them a piece of something that you have I don’t like it. When then try to storm the table using the latest strategies and tactics from the military officer’s book I don’t like it. Well, I better stop here… The only plesent thing except for sea was the presence of draught Carlsberg which saved the day.

After the beach, back in Paphos, we used the knowledge from yesterday’s mistake and booked the table in Cavallini restaurant. My first impressions were not very possitive due to a lot of people sitting behind tables which were located like 30 cm away from each other. That’s overcrowded in my book. The table for us was not ready, so we had to wait a bit inside on the couch. That’s a touchy thing. Menus looked fine as did the waiters. Servicing itself was not much, although everyone tried to stay as up to the class as possible. Food was very good, but not excellent. Except for the ice cream. That old family recipe is something. Overall a good place, but not worth a trip to Paphos. Not like yesterday. :)

Third day of vacations. We are starting to feel the spirit… :)

First, the traditional by now part of English breakfasting in the hotel restaurant, swimming pool fights, lots of photos, and the like. An interesting note about English breakfasts in this hotel: while food is of a proper quality, the combination of products makes it impossible to have one proper English breakfast. Each day a different component is missing: beans, eggs, sausages… Strange feeling of a trend. :)

Today we decided to have a real adventure for us and for our 4×4 friend. Akamas. And I am not talking about some sandy beaches in Akamas Peninsula 20 minutes away from our hotel. I mean real Akamas. Firstly, we took a different road to Polis, which laid through the many villages and a mountain. Some spectacular views there. All photographed, of course. :) Then, a cultural visit to Baths of Aphrodite with some more pictures taken there.

…and then a real thing. The arrow sign said: “Fontains of Amorosa”. And the road sign below it show a brick and claimed: “No entry”. Of course they meant all those normal sedans and saloons which are not ready for the rough part of the “Rough Guide to Cyprus” book. :) Some nice driving with the top speed of 5 km/hour over bumpy stones, red sands, between rocks and cliffs with the sea view to the right starting 30 santimeters to the right and 200 meters below the car. :)

First sandy beach we found was not actually a beach, but rather a sandy field surrounded by rocks which were vulcano lava long long long time ago. Nice view, but totally unprepared for beach tourism. So we continued deeper into the nature…

The second place we found was rather nice, so we decided to stay since it was a long late into the afternoon. Quick picnic with sandwitches and beer. The beach turned out to be a sneaky bastard. Sandy shore turned into a shallow rocky bottom. One had to walk few hundred meters for the water to get deep enough to cover shoulders. Rocks were terrible for walking with lots of staff growing over them. The water was warm though. Overall, it was good enough for one in time in 5 years, but not more often. :)

Back in Paphos we thought that it would be nice to have some real restaurant food today. First choice happened to be an Italian restaurant. We found it rather quickly, but unfortunately it was totally booked and hopelessly busy. So we continued with the second choice which was Metaxa restaurant. Luckily, they found a table for us. Excellent place with very nice service, excellent dishes (chicken liver, souzoukakia, and mushroom stake) and reasonable prices.

Joy and happy we are back home for a traditionally game of poker until it’s bed time. :)

Second day of vacations. This one starts from the morning. Kind of English breakfast at the hotel restaurant, then fun in the swimming pool.

A bit of planning followed with us deciding to rent a 4×4 car. It turned out that most of the rental offices that you could find by just travelling along the streets were out of cars. It’s unbelievable how many people are renting cars in the middle of September in Paphos. So, we got back home empty and started to call every rental office that came up in our mind or in the directory, or in Hazard’s invaluable book (“Rough Guide to Cyprus”). Luckily we find Budget Rentals where the last Suzuki Vitara is waiting for us. Good.

Back to home to prepare a lunch box for our picnic trip to Akamas Peninsula. That’s just a warm up. :)

In the evening, we tried cooking shrimps for first time. It turned out to be much easier then we thought. Actually, it’s even much easier and faster then cooking mussles by Hazard’s recipe. :) Just drop them into boiling water for 3-5 minutes and they are done. That’s the simpliest way of doing it. Numerous variations on spices and other ingridents are possible.

Second search expedition for K-Cineplex. It failed again, but not as misarably as yesterday. We managed to find some Oasis cinema which was built and equipped before the World War II, I beleive. We stayed to see a rather boring movie – “View from the Top“. If you’ll ever have a chance not to see it, use it. :)

Back at home, using the Internet we found out that there is …. [DRUMS PLAYING] …. NO K-CINEPLEX CINEMA IN PAPHOS!!! :) That’s one funny thing. :) Whatever…

It’s the 17th!!! No, 17th of September is not my birthday. Nor it’s a national holiday. And it’s far enough from Xmas day. And not the paycheck day. And it’s not even a Friday or Saturday…

No, it’s the first day of my vacation! Actually, it’s our vacation, not only mine. Olga, Hazard, and I are going to Paphos until Sunday of this week. And we are officially on vacations, on days off, out of the office, disconnected from the civilization and unreachable for the world. At least as far, as we can do it. :)

In order to darken a little bit the bright colors of the day, Hazard has his most black and unlucky day of his life. First, he was woken up early in the morning (before our trip to Paphos) by collegues who managed to press the dont-touch-the-red-auto-destruction button. That made him spent half of the nice morning working in the office. He used the opportunity of office connectivity to prepare the vacation notebook with all kinds of mp3s and DivX movies. But, the dark powers killed the notebook with electric shock right into the hard disk after few hours of copying files. He decides to get his butt back home where he finds out that wind played with his freshly washed clothes drying outside. Not a big issue you might say, but still…

Finally, we take off to Paphos and I am driving just in case. :) We check in at the Mayfair Hotel appartments, which seems like a nice place to stay for a few days. We are on the ground floor of a huge two bedroom flat which has an empty parking lot on one side and a swimming pool on the other. The swimming pool was actually much closer then parking lot. It was only 10 footsteps from away from the kitchen or our bedroom door. Lots of fun we shall have! :)

Lunch and shopping for vital items at Paphos Woolworth. Hazard’s blackest day continues with the news of evil powers stealing his credit card. Whoops! And if you still don’t believe in daemons and other scary staff, the worst of all happenned. It took Hazard about 3 hours to configure dial-up on his PC. He had all the wierd problems with modems, cables, mouse, power supply, phone, settings, and whatever else was possible in that day.

Evenings in Paphos are really really quiet and if you find yourself there you have to think about how to entertain yourself. We decided not to push it the first day and just go to the cinema. I had a memory of seeing K-Cineplex cinema in Paphos so we started a search-and-enjoy expedition. Numerous attempts to find the cinema on the same streets, turn-arounds, sneaky manouvers, etc. Driving until it was too late to even call the staff for help. So, we got back to home and played a little poker. Obviously, dark powers were against Hazard, but I am not going to describe their disgusting behaviours. :)

Off to bed, when everyone started to fall asleep. Good start! :)