Family Holiday Diary 2016
(Photo of our villa.)
Wednesday
We decided to go back to Old Pathos (the place that was completely deserted and inspired the creepy story:https://anneethompson.com/short-stories/other-stories/old-paphos-cyprus/) I just could not believe the guidebook could be so completely wrong. Only J wanted to come with us, the others all checked where we kept our will and where the passports were, just in case…
It was completely different. The car park was full, there were tourists everywhere. The market was full, lots of lace, leather goods, local wine, fake designer handbags and wine. I bought gifts and had a good look round. Then spent a few hours sitting under a convenient fan while J chose a wallet. Seriously, took hours. Important decision. (Will mainly hold used train tickets, but who am I to judge? Might be a need for them one day if anyone opens a train ticket museum.)
After lunch, we drove to look for a shipwreck I had spied from the hill top. Organised D had done a Google search of “Shipwrecks near Pathos”, found the exact location, and marked it on our map. J then left map on kitchen table. Drove west along coastline, saw lots of sea caves in the white cliffs. Found wreck. Apparently it had hit a rock further out to sea, veered off course, and hit the shore. I cannot imagine how such a huge boat had managed to not see the coast. Perhaps the pilot was looking for Pokemon or something. Interesting for us though. We could walk right up to it, and someone was swimming and climbed up onto the deck.
There is another wreck, nearer to Pathos. That one is slightly out to sea, and has grounded on some rocks near the surface. It’s a bit of a worry for the hoteliers I should think, as if it breaks up there will be lots of sharp metal shards on the beaches. At present it’s an interesting view. You can see the waves breaking where the rocks are (though obviously the pilot missed those. Or rather, didn’t miss those.) Expensive mistake for someone.
Dinner back at The Old Cinema Tavern in Pegeia. We shared a Mini Meze (nothing mini about it) and D and J shared a Full Meze. This amounted to a lot of food. It’s served in many courses, a bit like Spanish tapas. Meats, olives, pittas, beans with sage, feta, grilled halloumi. The males planned an eating strategy, H and I ignored them and ate what we wanted. J took photos of every course and then every empty plate. To be honest, I think the empty plate photos will all look quite similar…must be a Physics thing.
Finished with grapes and shots, and played charades. H had trouble counting number of words in titles. M had trouble miming “Texas”. Restaurant owner ignored us (which was good.)
Thursday
A lazy day. They all made sandcastles on the beach (doesn’t seem to be something they’re growing out of. Though they are more sculptures than sandcastles these days.) I walked around a development of new houses near the villa. This area of Cyprus has a LOT of new houses being built, whole streets of them. In some areas they have just built the roads, in preparation, others have whole streets. They tend to be built in order, the walls and roof first, then solar panels and a water heater on the roof, then they plaster the walls, before adding windows, woodwork etc. Lots of streets have one or two finished houses, I guess to entice buyers. They even fill the swimming pool and plant flowers in one garden (a bit strange when it’s in a half built street.) I had noticed that many of the road signs and all the estate agent signs, have writing in Greek, English and Mandarin. It’s unusual to see Mandarin on street signs outside of China. A waiter told me that this is because if you buy a property over €300,00 then Cyprus will issue a European passport. This makes it a good investment place for rich Chinese people.
It was M and H’s anniversary, and they wanted to cook and eat together at the villa, so the rest of us arranged to eat at Trattoria La Vigna, an Italian restaurant in Coral Bay that we could walk to.
Thank you for reading. On Monday I’ll tell you about our last day and the Tombs of the Kings.
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anneethompson.com
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Hidden Faces – a book to make you smile, think, and enjoy. Have you bought your copy yet?
Anne E Thompson 
Fascinating to read what Cyprus is all about…….
(sounds good for tourists !)
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