Paradise
Early Days
When family holiday time came around, we somehow decided on Cyprus. I think it was because my son wanted to go to a Greek island, but that would be hard to get to and, at the time, Greece was on fire. The other draw was, as Americans, they had never heard of Cyprus, so it seemed a suitably exotic location.
For my wife and I, getting there was fairly straightforward, though of course I was pulled out of line at security after passing through the metal detector.
“I’m going to search you,” the tall and unamused security goon told me before treating me to a full-body massage. Then he waved his wand at me (this is not a euphemism), stopped at my belt buckle, and demanded, “What is that?”
“My belt.”
“You were supposed to take it off!”
“No one told me to.”
“Take it off!”
So, I did. And he spent a considerable amount of time rubbing his fingers over the leather as if I might have somehow secreted an AK-47 inside. When he finished, he wanded me again and, again, stopped at my belt buckle area.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a snap,” I told him. “It comes with the jeans. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
Still suspicious, he gave that area an extra bit of massage, not enough that I felt obligated to add him to my Christmas list, but enough that I thought it might be a good idea to forget taking my belt off at the airport more often.
The theatrical absurdity of the incident surprised me; generally, you only get that sort of nonsense from the TSA.
Upon arrival, we set out to find the property, and I could not have been better prepared: I had a SatNav, with a new European data set imported and ready to go, my mobile phone’s SatNav as a back-up, printed maps, plus a few practice runs under my belt, courtesy of Google Earth. So, yeah, I got us lost and it took over an hour to find the place.
Eventually, we found the road that our compound was on, but there are hundreds, thousands, of similar properties here, all on higgledy-piggledy little roads, so finding Number 5 in Greco Villas Estate proved Needle-in-a-Haystack hard.
Oddly, what saved us was Lidl. My wife, ever concerned about where to get supplies, had previously spotted a Lidl close to our rental on Google Earth, and our many trips up and down the main drag familiarized up with its location. So, using Lidl to narrow our search—and after multiple trips up and down narrow lanes followed by a number of three (plus)-point turns—we found it.
Because my son and his family were going to stay with us, the rental (they call it a villa) is a lot more than the two of us need. In addition to the standard sitting room and kitchen—both ample sized and thoroughly kitted out, there are five bedrooms and three bathrooms. One set—bedroom/bathroom—is in a lower level, nice and cool, self-contained (with its own door) and perfect for us.
We didn’t know about the Granny-Annex. In fact, we didn’t know about anything. All we did was go to a travel agent, explain our requirements and—after spending the equivalent of my 1981 yearly salary—we ended up with a Mediterranean château, which is at once, uninspiring, yet masterfully constructed.
It is essentially a concrete cube—vaguely resembling an albino Borg ship—but inside it’s roomy, thoughtfully arranged and well appointed. In addition to the five bedrooms, three bathrooms, and two patios, there is also—nestled in a detached edifice that any sane person would assume to be the garage—a regulation-sized pool table. For no fucking reason. Every one of these Greco Villas has one. The posher places surrounding us do not. Perhaps the locals believe pool is an ingrained middle-middle-class British activity. I wonder what comes bundled into the posher villas: a Croquet set-up complete with a bar serving Pimms & Lemonade with cucumber sandwiches?
Nearby, in addition to Lidl, is the Mediterranean Sea, and a strip containing restaurants and other entertainments. Closer to home—attached to it, in fact—is a patio and a private swimming pool. The G-kids already have a built-in swimming pool at home (jammy bastards) so I wonder if it will be as big a draw as the trampoline from their previous visit was.
On the other hand, whether it impresses them or not, my wife and I are certainly enjoying it.
Chillin; in the Heat
Day Three, and we have completed our morning routine of rising at 7:00, going for a swim, then wandering into town for breakfast. It’s just after 10:00 now, and already it’s 94 degrees (34 C). There is, however, a hint of a breeze, so my wife and I are sitting in the covered patio area bravely facing the heat, where we will stay until around 4:30 in the afternoon, which is when the shadows reach the swimming pool, and we can enjoy a dip without taking on the hue of a boiled lobster. During the bulk of the day, however, we’re held hostage by the climate, hiding in the shade, sipping cool drinks, and often retreating inside for the air conditioning.
Our usual habit of cooking our own dinners was never considered; it’s too hot to cook, so we have a simple lunch at our villa (I love saying that, “our villa,”) and, when the sun is low, go back to restaurant alley.
The first day, we went to a place I cannot pronounce the name of that served local cuisine. It was fabulous. I had the octopus, because that’s not something I can get in Horsham. I expected it to be tasteless and rubbery—a bit like conch—so I was pleasantly surprised to find it tender and flavoursome. I was enjoying it until I started re-playing scenes from David Attenborough’s Blue Planet, where he reveals how intelligent, resourceful, and delightfully playful octopuses are. It didn’t put me off, but I don’t think I’ll order it again; I’d feel like I was dining on someone’s pet schnauzer.
Tomorrow, we get the family, and I do wonder how they are going to react to this heat. On the one hand, it’s not as hot as where they live, but it’s still too hot to want to run around in the midday sun (mad dogs and Englishmen, and all that).
Taking the Heat
Got the family, sorted everyone out, and the kids jumped in the pool. We had a quick dinner at the villa (after going to a very crowded Lidl to buy frozen pizza and chicken nuggets), then the kids jumped back in the pool.
They like the pool.
The next morning, after getting the kids out of the pool, we decided to go to the front for food and adventure. This was what my wife and I had feared. For days we had cowered under the covering, hiding from the sun but, having no option, we followed the family into the 98-degree heat and … it wasn’t that bad. We’d slathered up, naturally, and taken what precautions we could (hats and so on), and kept to the shade when possible, and at no time did I feel unbearably hot. It was quite liberating.
The only time I got hot was when we went to the beach, where the sand felt like it had come fresh from a blast furnace. The water was cool, but that made hot sand stick to my feet. We finally settled down on a lounger (€7.30) and watched the family swim. My wife and I decided not to go into the sea, which turned out to be a wise choice: five people went into the water, four returned wounded. We’re still not sure what happened, but they all got some sort of sting, and one had a cut. We managed to get the walking wounded back to base, where a swim in the pool put them right.
One day we did a boat trip, which was jolly good fun, especially when they stopped the boat and let people jump off.
On another day, we went to an aquarium. The kids love aquariums, and this had the advantage of also being a mini-zoo, with many exotic animals.
Yesterday was Beach Day. My DIL couldn’t let the week go by without the family spending a day on the beach (it is a beach holiday, after all). My son, however, was not looking forward to it (hot, sandy, boring) but he and the kids had such a good time they decided to go back again tomorrow. Therefore, on this, their penultimate day, we took it easy to allow them to rest up, spending most of it in the pool and visiting a local sculpture park in the afternoon.
Normal People
It has occurred to me and my wife that we are currently doing what normal people do on holiday, and we hate it. Sun, sand, surf, crowds of tanned (or pink) people, always hot, always sweaty, always sticky.
I cannot wait to get back to Sussex and put on a jacket.
We joked when we first arrived that this holiday would provide four welcomed events: we would be happy when we arrived, we would be happy to greet the family, we would be happy to have three days on our own at the end of the holiday, and we would be happy to go home.
But the family left just yesterday and, truth be told, we’re ready to go home now. We’ve been here twelve days already and we have three more to go.
My wife doesn’t like the heat, and I don’t like this much heat, and we don’t beach (if beach can be a verb), and we are not the type to sit around doing sod all. Going for another walk along the seafront would be sweaty and pointless, and I’ve already seen enough boobs and bums to last me into the next decade.
This would have made an outstanding final day: yesterday, after an early morning—4 AM!!—airport run, we enjoyed a lovely, lazy day. We swam, we read, we went into town and had a nice dinner, then we sat by the pool late into the warm evening. To get up this morning and head to the airport would have been a welcome activity, indeed. As it is, we have two more lazy days in 98-degree heat to get through when we could be, should be, home.
We’re missing our volunteer work, we’re missing choir (both of them), my wife has missed three mulching days in the Park, and I haven’t picked up a guitar in two weeks. Reports we’re getting from back home tell us it’s raining and chilly in Sussex. I can’t wait.
This is so like the summers of my youth, and I wonder if, after two weeks of going barefoot and wearing nothing but shorts or a bathing suit, when I put on socks and jeans and proper shoes, if it will feel like the first day of school after ten weeks of gloriously sultry summer.
We’ll see. But for now, it is what it is. We’re here, and we’ll just have to make the most of it: swim, go out to eat, sit by the pool in the cool (or less hot) evenings, and enjoy another day in fucking paradise.
