A week in Cyrpus

 Been back a few days now but had a great week in Cyprus last week. We went on the Saturday morning (Me, Tash, Charlotte, Lewis and Emily) and following us was Zoe, with Niamh and Kate Millar - we met Laoisa there as she could get the train direct

Left quite early and had a good run down there although a bit of a problem for us as the van was too high for car park 5 but we sorted and it and were on our way.

The hotel was very nice and we settled in quickly - it was all inclusive and it was also adults-only which was noticeable.

In the coming days we had Jason and Sharon turn up late (after midnight) on Sunday and then all the Holdens arrive on Tuesday evening (Wayne, Kerry, Nicole, Dan, Paul and Pauline) - so all 17 were there

We relaxed during the day, sleeping, drinking, eating and messing about in the sea - that was a challenge to get into, Tash had a horrible fall on the first day when she and Charlotte tried to get in using  shortcut and badly bruised her leg for the rest of the holiday.

The weather was very sunny and very hot all week - sweating and keeping in the shade as much as possible. I played a table tennis tournament but only came second - but was happy with that. Played Lewis the following day and he beat me comfortably - didn't get to play against Wayne in the end, couldn't be bothered I don't think.

Evenings we would have dinner in the main buffet area or in booked restaurants - we managed 3 of the 4 so that wasn't too bad, Greek, Italian and Asian. Better food in those as you'd expect.

Each night we would do a round-robin announcing our highlights and lowlights from the day which was fun

We went out to Paphos one evening after lunch, just wandered around and then went to Bar Street which is their "strip" - not much to it but we also chose a shit bar to sit in but it was a night out.

The highlight of the holiday was easily the boat trip, whilst still in the UK Tash (who else?) organise a 3hr sunset booze cruise, we found the boat at 4.30pm and he let us on straight away, Sharon put her Boat Party playlist on and from the first 10 seconds we were on it - singing, dancing, drinking - we'd not left the harbour and you could tell this was going to be a great evening. 

And it was!

We set out and stopped a couple of times, first time we were diving off the boat but the current was so strong, I found that hard initially but otherwise everything was great. As the trip went on we got more drunk and the playlist was open to everyone - ah - it was amazing, we had a such a good time, everyone got totally hooked into it.

We saw the sunset and made more and more noise with our singing, even when back at the harbour at 8.00pm and everyone sat in their nice restaurants with us all singing at the top of our voices!

I wanted to stay out and go to a karaoke bar but was over-ruled so we all went back to the hotel to get changed and eat. I wasn't happy about that because I knew most of us wouldn't go back out and the opportunity had passed. About 6 of them (the kids) did go back out but they were finished by 2.30am we heard in the morning. Still, it didn't detract from such a brilliant day.

Didn't have a heavy head on any of the mornings which was a pleasant surprise, I guess we did drink (and eat) in moderation throughout the day to be fair.

So we were only there for the week and left Saturday around 7.20pm, Holdens and Millars waved us off and the airport was busy and not well organised but eventually we got the plane an hour late and back to Gatwick in the early hours, no problem getting the van and said our goodbyes with Carrolls and got home to bed about 4.30am.

Such a lovely time - really enjoyed it, even if it started off a bit rough because of my idiotic antics on Thursday night/Friday morning - I so regret that!