Package Holiday Hell?
Cyprus Travel Review
Another short break and brief travel review, this time on a package holiday to Cyprus.
Have you ever been on a package holiday? I’ve always felt I was an indepedant traveller, I would never succumb to they types of holidays that the masses go on. I never thought I would trawl the internet into the wee hours of the morning trying to find the cheapest deal on the internet, only to be told the following morning that that holiday had gone… or to be told ‘I’ve no idea how a holiday at that price ended up on the internet for those dates… now let me have a look at what else we can find you”. And so it went on, package holiday hell.
So why did I decide to go on a package holiday? Half term week, latish booking. expensive flights. I was determined to find something cheap through a travel agent, I’d never bought a holiday before from a travel agent – I thought it would be fun. Wrong. In the end my girlfriend rang Olypic Holidays as she was getting frustrated with my constant moaning. Hey presto, after a bit of haggling we had the cheapest holiday we could find in Cyprus during half term week. £439 each, bed and breakfast in the Hylatio Tourist Village in Pissouri Bay. (We had to avoid Aiya Napa – that was one of the conditions of booking a package holiday)
Counting down the days to the off, I was concerned that I didn’t have a wheelie suitcase to put everything in. I was also concerned that I didn’t have enough clothes to take to fill a large wheelie suitcase. I plumped for the trusted Tatonka Barrel Holdall to see my luggage safely to the resort, stuffed full of the usual things that I take on my travels, Victorinox Penknife, Headtorch, First Aid Kit, Travel Towel, Travel Plug Adapter (actually I didn’t need one of these – Cyprus uses the same plug socket as the UK) to be honest there wasn’t a lot of things that I did need. It was one of those holidays where all I needed was shorts, beach mat and a book. I think I might like this package holiday.
Off to Gatwick and onto a Monarch Airbus A300 along with 300 other passengers, including a lot of children. I was concerned that the 4 hours of flying was going to be interspersed with the sweet melodies of children screaming and crying – but I was pleasantly surprised, no crying, no screaming. Perhaps that is one of the bonuses of getting an afternoon flight, that and the delicious Cottage Pie and carrots we had served up. I love airline food and I love the creative way that they pack everything into a neat little package that even contains a delightfully printed table cloth, or should I say table piece of card. It’s great. Am I the only one though? Everyone seems to moan about it. Sometimes I feel sad when using budget airlines as I don’t get to experience this wonderful little bit of airline hospitality.
Into Cyprus and we are carefully directed to a minibus to take us to the hotel. None of this finding out where the busses go from or haggling over the price of a taxi, it’s all done for you. And onto the hotel. We stayed at the Hylatio Tourist Village in Pissouri Bay sounds interesting, almost like a Butlins in the sun, but luckily in reality is a lovely little complex of apartments and houses, a pool, tennis court, bar, restaurant and shop where you can buy yesterday’s Sun. Hylatio Tourist Village is owned and run by Vlad, not that we knew this when he greeted us in the reception all smiley and speaking his best Greek to us. Oh dear. I failed in one of my rules of going to a foreign country, one of my Travel Top Tips. Learn some basics of their language. Make sure you do. I thought that going on a package holiday to a place like Cyprus everyone would talk English. As it turned out, they did. This was Vlad’s humour creeping in right at the start of the holiday. Relieved that he spoke impeccable English we were taken to out rooms and advised that we could get dinner up till 11pm in the restaurant. Time to brush up on my Greek. I felt like a fool not knowing any.
At dinner, we were greeted by out waiter and prime host for most of the holiday, Michael. Determined to make up for my ignorance when I arrived at reception, I asked how he was in Greek and this was followed up with him explaining in English, that he was from Romania working here for the season, so English would be best. Thwarted again. I didn’t bring my Romanian phrase book to impress him with.
Cyprus was glorious. She was in full sun and full heat for us – for the whole week. We couldn’t have asked for better weather. Waking up to the sun coming through the chink in our curtains, slightly dappled by the trailing bourgenvilia of reds and whites that adorned our little veranda. Hylatio was blessed with having a tennis court, and sadly I was never blessed with being allowed a lie as we wanted to have a knock around and the best time for this is before breakfast while it is still cool.
Breakfast was followed by that thing that has always fascinated me. Sitting by the pool. Why would I want to sit by the pool when there was a perfectly good beach ten minutes down the road? Well, I had to try it out and it was a good job we were at the tail end of the season. Already, much to my amusement, there were towels on the sunbeds and no one to be seen. I thought this was just jovial urban (or holiday) myth, but no. People really did get up and put their towels on their favourite sun loungers then disappear off to do other things, like have a lie in. This was a great source of amusement for us, a couple of mornings where we had to get up quite early we would dutifully see people spreading out their towels staking a claim on the poolside loungers, much like an explorer raising his flag on a foreign land claiming it for the crown. I guess the British just can’t escape the old feeling of wanting to expand the Empire. I wonder what would have happened if we sat on one of those loungers saying that we thought they had gone and left their towels out over night? An experiment for next time.
Cyprus is a wonderful country with so much to see and do. On our list was a trip to the Troodos mouontains to go for a walk, Pafos to see the Roman mosaics, Kourion to look at the ancient ruins, a trip into Lymissol to see the old town stopping, by the Flamingos at the salt lake on the way, followed by a trip to Ancient Amathos and one day a drive out to Nicosea to see the last divided city in the world and to cross the green line into North Cyprus, just to have a look. We were here for a week. Plenty of time to fit it all in. But no.
In England it is grey, cold and overcast. In Cyprus it is hot and sunny this is where it goes wrong. After lounging by the pool a trip to the beach is always needed as I love to swim in the sea. The beaches are lovely and clean, European Blue Flag standard and in October hardly busy at all. We rolled out our reed beach mats, towels underhead, stripped off to beach wear, slapped on the sun cream and read. And read. And swam. And read. Then we had a late lunch and realised that the day was totally slipping away as we relaxed into a life on the beach. This happened for two days, total wind down and total absorption into our books.
The rest of week went something like this. Get up, play tennis, have breakfast and be terrorised by the cats (they drew blood from me one day), sit by the pool on the spare loungers without towels no them, head to the beach, lounge around and swim and relish in the nourishment of the sun. Late lunch and then rush off to do something in the afternoon. Make sure you do. As I said earlier there is so much to see and do in Cyprus you need to make time to do, or you can just get so absorbed in doing nothing. It’s easy. We made it to the Troodos mountains and had an excellent walk on the
Artemis Trail, looking at the views and taking careful note of all the natural wonders pointed out by the guide, such as the Black Pine Tree Stump that was still alive despite being cut down many years ago. We also got to the ruins at Pafos, this was a little disappointing as the House of Dionysus was closed and this is supposed to be one of the more interesting houses to see mosaics. However, the other mosaics are indeed wonderful to see and amazing works of art. The rest of the site still needs a lot of work doing to it and I felt slightly disappointed, though the main reason people come here is to see the mosaics. The town of Pafos wasn’t particulary nice, which was probably heightened by the restaurant we ate in with a rather unpleasant meal of badly cooked meat and chips.
Kourion on the other other hand I found really interesting, the amphitheatre, the more complete buildings, more mosaics, it had much more that interested me and it is easy to lose several hours wandering around and thinking about how the site would have been like 1800 years ago. The plan was to head off to Limassol, but, due to the beach we never quite made it and headed back to Pissouri Village for dinner. The other intriguing thing to this holiday was the staff that worked in the bars and the restaurants. We needn’t have bothered learning any Greek. We were hardly served by any Cypriots and Fiona and I started to play the game of guess where the staff are from. By the end of the week we meet staff from, Romania, Poland, Ukraine, India, Bulgaria, England and just about, Cyprus. And people complain about the foreign workers in the
Cyprus offers up sun, autumn heat, great food and drink, perfect clean beaches and seas wonderful people and incredible sights to go and visit. For my first package holiday, this was great, apart from the nine hour delay on the flight home, but that could happen anywhere. Definalty not package holiday hell. Go to
Top travel tips for Cyprus:
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Do learn a little Greek before you go.
- Don’t try and plan to do too much. It’ll all be there for anther time.
- Hire a car – the busses don’t go to all the beaches.
- Think about where you want to stay. Pissouri is very different to Pafos.
- Don’t take too many clothes – you really don’t need them.
- Try as many different dishes as you can. The calamari and fish are superb. As is Keo Beer.
- Play the where’s your waiter/waitress from game. It’s fun and you can get them to teach you some of their language.
- They use the Euro from January 2008.
- The plug sockets are the same as England so you don’t need a travel plug adapter.
- Go to the Troodos Mountains for respite from the heat of the lowlands and see the wonderful views and take in the fresh mountain air.
- Go to Kourian, the ruins are very evocative.
