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Phil’s Travels – Nicosia, Cyprus (08.26)

Phil’s Travels – Nicosia, Cyprus (08.26)

We were looking forward to nearly seven cool weeks in Cyprus. Cooler than London anyway. London had been sweltering under record heatwaves all summer and that was no fun without air-conditioning, especially at night. In Cyprus, yes, the temperatures were similar to London (>30C), but the major differences were air-conditioning at home and access to the cooling waters of a swimming pool at the nearby Hilton. We went to Cyprus to cool off.

The evening before departure we realised that I had not booked a hire car for our time on island, so I dashed about the internet in search of a vehicle. The only one that came up was via Europcar. I had no idea what I was booking as there was no picture of the vehicle and only a brief description to say it had four doors. With no other option I booked it as a fully flexible package so we could make changes on arrival if necessary. As ever, the website offered lots of extra insurance options and I ticked them all as we always go ‘fully comp’. Better safe than sorry.

On the morning of our departure, my alarm rang for a full three minutes before I woke up mid-dream (something to do with seeking ravioli in the fridge). My wife had set the volume to low and it was no longer fit for purpose (namely, waking me up). Despite the ravioli panic we made it to the airport on time.

At Larnaca Airport I was subjected to an Apple-style case of revenue gouging. Apple is notorious for this practice and my wonderful wife experienced it only a couple of weeks prior. She bought a new laptop and it came with a power cable. But, without a plug. She was told although old cables (for which she had plugs) would work with the new machine, such old cabling could damage the new batteries and would be very slow anyway. Result? She had to buy a new plug as well, for an additional £40! Furthermore, the new Apple cables do not work in old-style USB charging points, which populate every hotel and car on the planet. More gouging opportunities for the tech bros right there from the hotels and cars of the world.

At Larnaca Airport, Europcar gouged me for additional insurance. What I had booked online turned out to be not ‘fully comp’ after all. It did not include body damage. I added the extra insurance and was assured that we were now ‘fully-comp’. The Europcar lady advised that next time we booked, it would be cheaper to not select all the insurances on the website and to ask for them on check-in, as bundling in-person at the check-in desk was cheaper. Talk about revenue gouging!

Then the Europcar lady dropped the real bombshell. The mystery car I had booked was what Cypriots call a Diplocambino, which is a four-door pick-up truck. Essentially a farm vehicle (or something a macho handyman might drive) and certainly not fit for city driving around Nicosia and entirely inappropriate for my wonderful wife (who struggles with a Mini these days).

I told the Europcar lady that the Diplocambino was a no go for us (‘we are not running a farm’) and that either we cancelled the booking or she found us a smaller car that my wonderful wife could also drive. What kind of tourist hires a monster truck in a small place like Cyprus? After much searching the nice lady found us a smaller car and advised that our fee would be adjusted accordingly by her manager in the coming days. We walked to the car collection area and the smaller car turned out to be something that sounded like a Honda Vajazzle. The Honda Vezel was essentially a mid-sized SUV and still too big for my wonderful wife. The helpful car collection chappie advised us to take it for now anyway, to secure a car, and to speak with the check-in lady again to organise a smaller car in the coming days.

The nice Europcar lady worked wonders and we collected a much more wonderful wife appropriate vehicle the following day.  We were assured the whole hire fee would be reworked again by the manager and be advised of the new cost shortly. Our ultimate vehicle for the entire stay was a red Kia Rio. Being red, in my eyes anyway, we had a Ferrari and I had the sunglasses to prove it. For a Ferrari though it was somewhat underpowered and struggled around the mountains. It also had a bossy persona, pinging and ponging in throws of righteous attitude at every little action. And the horn was the meekest sound you ever heard. “I apologise for the inconvenience, but please could I honk? Meep.”

Our time in Cyprus was full of work and occasional sunbathing, punctuated by a 05.00 siren on 20 July to mark the anniversary of the island’s invasion and a visit to the Presidential Palace for an event marking the day.

Yaya’s poor printer finally gave up during our tenure and I had the usual IT installation struggles to get the swizzy new one working – key steps in the instructions omitted, password not where indicated and nearly three hours later all systems go (with my laptop anyway, Yaya will need a new one to work with such new tech – more tech bro gouging).

We visited the old Hilton, now The Landmark. The parking is now in a sweltering hot box underground. The lobby is reoriented but kind of works. The bar looks like a CitizenM lounge. The pools were uninviting and most of the gardens concreted over. Finally, no flexibility in offering a summer pool membership, but no big shakes as we preferred the friendlier old Hilton Park and now sole Hilton anyway. To compete with The Landmark, the Hilton had introduced new oversized loungers, requiring two towels (until they buy new oversized towels to match).

The flexing bollards reappeared outside Zorbas and seemed to be more respected this summer and were still in one piece after seven weeks. The horrid apartment block outside Yaya’s back window was completed and partially occupied, which meant no more signature tuneful cicadas as the old trees in the old garden of the old house of the old neighbour were no more (all felled and replaced with concrete).

Outside of work, trips and family, I passed my downtime with immersive zombieland experiences – watching The Last of Us (fast zombies) and reading The Enemy series (slow zombies). When the zombiefest came to full demise, I switched to mobland culture and started watching the fabulous Sopranos.

I made it to the beach only once all summer, Landa Beach, close to Ayia Napa Marina. Soft sand, not too busy, clean toilets, a choice of restaurants and not too touristy. Highly recommended.

In the second week, all four ladies of the house became sick (Yaya, carer, wife and daughter). The doctor came and prescribed left and right, like the quickfire Joel Miller shooting cordyceps-infected zombies across America. Not that it did much good. For the first week of their combined sick states, Yaya’s poor apartment was the noisiest and most unpleasant place in the entire Mediterranean basin. The coughing, spluttering, hawking and sneezing produced a continuity of sound beyond all imagination. Somehow in such a petri dish of disease, the hardy men of the house (my son and I) did not add to the four horsewomen of the respiratory apocalypse.

We stayed in a couple of hotels during our summer. Our family favourite in Paphos for the first time in three years – still wonderful, still decorated with pink nipples, still the ultimate breakfast buffet and many thanks to Luigi and Yiannie for the very kind contributions. The second was a new hotel (for us) in Lofou up in the mountains – nice enough but food not good. Whilst in the mountains we visited a couple of wineries, were gifted a string of garlic, revisited Milos after more than 20 years and bought an old and rare ‘lulaji’ in Lefkara.

We saw The Odyssey at a local cinema in the big mall and I wish I hadn’t. Not a good movie and when my super son watched it back home in London on IMAX he could not see the point. Sorry Chris, but your Batman was way better.

One slow Sunday afternoon I took my wonderful wife off-piste and we drove to Athienou for an explore. Athienou is a village near Nicosia where my wonderful wife’s father was born and raised. She had not been to the village in over 30 years. We slowly crawled around the village streets in our air-conditioned ‘Ferrari’ seeking her paternal grandparent’s old home. We avoided the nearby Green Line and Turkish soldiers and pulled a local baker out of his siesta to sell us some local treats and he helped us locate grandpa’s 100+ year old house.

In this crazy new world of climate change, where London is hotter than Cyprus in summer, it rained on a few days in Nicosia. So intense on occasion that the roads became rivers and the Government sent alarmed warnings via SMS to every mobile-phone on island. Such tempests are not normally in the summer brochure.

We covered a good few miles in our Ferrari and frequently noted a heavy police presence in the towns and on the highways. Not in the mountains though. I was followed so often I thought I was either a spy under surveillance or being treated to an escort service. I was told that the Blue Line had been making a concerted effort this summer to curtail the usual high casualty count on the roads. The people of Cyprus are the most lovely and generous people. However, put them behind the wheel of a car or a bike and they transform into the most aggressive, mean and antisocial people you could possibly imagine and that is a recipe for plenty of road accidents. According to Chris, Odysseus demonstrated a similar personality change in his disregard for Zeus’s Law during his odyssey back to Ithaca. Maybe it’s a Greek thing when undertaking a journey to switch schizophrenically between extreme personalities.

Back to the Europcar saga. In arriving at a settlement many weeks into our stay, Customer Services said that their car insurance premiums were the same price for small and big cars. So, a truck was the same price to repair as a cheap Kia. I queried such logic but never got a reply. It took over six weeks to finally resolve our hire fee, after many emails, Whatsapp messages and a consistent failure to speak. Even then, when I returned the car on the very last day there were further issues.

As per last year, I had to leave a couple of days earlier than planned, with the girls following as scheduled. This is becoming something of an annual trend. Anyway, such early departure meant I missed the filming of the documentary of Yaya’s life as a Bond Girl. Hopefully I will see the eventual Netflix production soon.

The return flight carried some big, colour-coded families. One with five daughters, all under six and wearing matching Hello Kittie t-shirts; and one with four boys, all under five and wearing matching blue t-shirts. It was a very animated five hours to London. Pizza (perhaps my favourite food) is not a forte of Cyprus, so after seven long weeks of self-imposed pizza starvation, I concluded my return with a Filippo in the comfort of my own home.

Whilst away, world events included: another changing of the guard at No 10; Trump tried to grab FIFA and to hijack the World Cup; Spain beat a lamentable and FIFA-backed Argentina; and England thrashed the Golden Boot winner for third place.