Veerle's blog

All good things come to an end and so did my holiday. I’m still adapting to Belgium weather again. After being used to temperatures from 36-40�C coming home and having 18�C it feels like winter.  We already experienced the ever changing weather with wind, thunderstorms, heavy rain, sun, etc and that all in 4 days :-) So let’s say that I am still looking forward to some hot August Summer temps.

Back to the story of my trip. The first surprise happened when the taxi took us to our hotel. We both totally forgot that cars drive on the left over there. So that would take some getting use to, but the thing that withhold us from renting a car was the fact that they drive mad, racing in the streets, ignoring signs, no use of flash lights etc… The cops there are very slack and do almost nothing about wrong parking etc. That’s why this holiday ended up as being one of eating, sunbathing and our 1,5 hour daily walk. We did explore a big part of both directions from our hotel.

The Amathus Beach hotel is very nice. It has a beautiful big garden and everything is very well maintained. It is easy to get lazy there because of the beach service guys and girls and your daily refreshing towels etc. All the hard work we did was facing the heat and getting a tan :-) The hotel has 2 outdoor pools and one 25 meter indoor pool. But I use it only once and managed to get an ear infection along the way because of the water being too hot and swimming underwater. So for 5 or 6 days I only had one good ear which let to some funny situations of me not hearing a thing of what was being said.

The coincidence was that we met some clients of us on the plane to Cyprus and they ended up just a little walk from our hotel in the Four Seasons. One night we meet-up for drinks in the Four Seasons with our clients and we where joined by the fitness manager of the Four Seasons. Once he learned that we were staying at the competition he arranged a grand tour of the Penthouse Suite and the Royal Suite. What can I say other then WOW! Probably my first and last time in such luxury. The Penthouse suite costs around 900 Euro for a night. I have no idea what the Royal Suite costs but after hearing that it is mostly rented out to sheiks you get the idea :-)

On to the environment then, well that’s all good and dandy as long as you stay on hotel grounds. There was sort of a little promenade (don’t think too much of it, very small) that we used for our daily walks along the beaches. The first thing that we noticed was the littering, there is so much of it.

The surrounding is in contrast with the hotel we stayed in. I got the feeling that the government doesn’t do anything about the fact that people throw trash along the road and on beaches. It’s not because of the lack of bins, they are there, but unfortunately the attitude to use them is missing. And it’s not from tourists since they stay in their hotel, it’s from the locals who do a Sunday picnic and leave all their trash behind. The walk we did was more because we were in need of some exercise instead of enjoying the view, luckily there was the nice blue sea.

One night we went to the old town of Limassol to have a nice dinner. You have this citadel surrounded with restaurants, very nice (but a bit too crowed). The meal we had was also delicious but once we were finished there was no where to go (unless you fancy karaoke or footy… and are from the U.K.). There was only the citadel and that’s it. So we went back to our hotel. It was obvious that this would be a very relaxing holiday with no nightlife at all even to go out for a drink wasn’t really the case there.

But I don’t want to sound disappointed here because I’m not. I enjoyed my holiday till the last minute! We got to know some very friendly people from Scotland (Morven and Susan, Molly and little Sophie). Getting to know them really made our holiday :-) One day Morven asked us to join them to go para sailing. It was a great experience, just hanging there above the sea, I would certainly do it again. That day was a day full of excitement for me, it started with a massage, some para sailing and then a fabulous ride on the banana boat! I never yelled and laughed so much :-) What a ride that was! My arms were a bit sore afterwards (lasted for 3 days) because I had to hold on tide not to fall off.

All in all I had a splendid holiday, the hotel was the best we had so far. I enjoyed the garden, the sunny weather, even the heat (very bearable if there was wind), the nice view we had on the sea and most of all the company of our new Scottish friends during the last days.

You can view my holiday pictures on Flickr.