Thoughts From A Small Island

I have noticed that there was an error in last week's blog, The Holiday Planner ,  when I inadvertently relocated Paphos, which is in Cyprus, to Crete. No doubt many of you noticed this but were too polite to point it out! As I mentioned last week, holidays can be stressful and our trip to Paphos was quite stressful in the booking but fortunately pretty much stress free in the implementation. Pretty much but not entirely, because as anyone who has ever flown knows, the bit between arriving at the airport and actually boarding the plane seems designed to be awkward and stress inducing, although in fairness it could have been worse.

Inside Stansted.  Picture: telegraph.co.uk 

We arrived at Stansted in good time, our car was taken away to be parked and we entered the terminal, where a few things have changed since I was last there. Firstly entry to the security screening area requires scanning your boarding pass, which two out of the three of did at the first attempt; Val had to have three goes before the machine deigned to open the gates. Something always happens to one of us at when we pass through airport security: at Los Angeles a few years ago, Val was taken off to a side room after the fingerprint recognition machine decided that she actually had no fingerprints whatever. After the boarding pass scan, the line for the security checks, which is where Stansted always appears to be particularly chaotic, and this time was no exception. First up, the ritual that would have made a great task on The Krypton Factor[1], of fitting your 100ml bottles of toiletries into a clear plastic bag, which it is advertised measures 20cm x 20cm, but is actually 19x19 (yes, I did measure it).

Having fallen foul of Stansted's security a few years ago when flying to Majorca when our toiletries were deemed not to meet the necessary standards and which resulted in us being delayed and having to run to the gate, where we were the last two passengers and only just got on the flight, we were certain to make sure that we were OK this time and passed through without incident, unlike the elderly lady and the toddler in a buggy who had to pass their shoes through the scanner. If a lot of these checks seem a bit arbitrary, then I'm sure it because they are to a large degree. These sorts of restrictions, which aren't uniform across Europe, let alone the world as a whole, were introduced more as a means of suggesting that something was being done in the fight against possible terror attacks on airlines rather than as a means of defeating a specific threat. After all, when we flew back from Majorca  after that incident I mentioned, there was no requirement to transfer our toiletries into a clear plastic bag. This year at Paphos on the way back I actually asked if they had any plastic bags at security as there was a sign saying they were needed; none were available so our toiletries went through the scanner in our normal luggage.

That was just one of a few contrasts between the airports at Stansted and Paphos. At Stansted a great deal of remodelling is going on, hence the area after the Duty Free shops and around the restaurants is a bit frenzied. Having plenty of time to spare on this occasion, we treated ourselves to a meal in Giraffe (and very good it was too). At Paphos the departure area is an oasis of calm. Fewer shops, fewer places to eat and crucially, fewer passengers. Stansted serves 19.98 million passengers per year; after an upgrade, Paphos will be able to handle 2.7 million per year. While planes were taking off every minute or so from Stansted, there was only one departure from Paphos in the two hours we spent waiting for our flight home.

We were sorry to leave Cyprus; none of us had been to the island before but hopefully it won't be too long before we return as almost everything about our trip was right. The hotel we stayed at, The Annabelle, is quite large (218 rooms) but never impersonal. We ran out of superlatives in describing it. We had a well appointed suite with a sea view from our balcony and the service is attentive without being intrusive. 

Nice waking up to this view each morning.

We had booked half-board as it was the same price as bed and breakfast; we figured that we could eat out if the restaurant wasn't to our taste, but we never did. The restaurant is a buffet, something which can sometimes mean that meals are a bit of a bun fight, but this was really very good and had the bonus of allowing the more fastidious of us to tailor our meals exactly to our tastes and permitting the more enthusiastic of us to go round a few times to sample the widest range of dishes.

I had some company to go with my coffee.

Only being there for five days we stayed pretty close to the hotel, but managed to sample some culture (the Kato Paphos Archaeological Park), indulge in some retail therapy (The Kings Avenue Mall), go on a glass bottom boat trip and generally chill out. In the afternoons, while Val and Sarah took a dip in the pool, I would find a shady spot to read a book, and would often be joined by one of the cats that frequent the hotel. We took some walks, although it was a bit hot at times and one walk along the coast had to be cut short when it got dark.  Every day we took a stroll down to the marina and enjoyed a  coffee at The Poseidonas Cafe. Generally it was quite a laid back few days and we were sorry to come home.

Medieval Castle of Paphos

Kato Paphos Archaeological Park, including yours truly and Val at The Odeon.

The lovely church of St Nicholas that we found on one of our walks.

We returned to Stansted and used the automated passport gates that you can use if you have a new biometric ‘chipped’ passport. These are supposed to speed the process up, but there was still a long queue and some people were rejected and had to be processed manually. It seemed to take an age for the machine to recognise my photo and open the gates and Sarah had to have a number of goes before finally being allowed through but overall it was probably a bit quicker than standing in line waiting to be processed by a human being. We picked up our car, which took a bit longer than I was happy about; the ten minutes they promised on the phone stretched out to half an hour, something which I was going to provide feedback on when Purple Parking sent me an email with a link to their survey. Unfortunately the link in their mail didn't work. Still, I did add a couple of reviews on tripadvisor (http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/) of the hotel and the archaeological park. Tripadvisor is a site which I've usually found pretty reliable, unlike some, as a recent news story from the BBC showed,  suggesting that at least 20% of comments posted on review websites are bogus (there is no suggestion that tripadvisor is one of those sites).

Cyprus in general and The Annabelle in particular are now firmly on my list of places I'd like to revisit in the future.

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[1] The Krypton Factor was a British TV gameshow that was part quiz, part assault course. It ran from 1977 to 1995 but was revived for two series in 2009/2010.