Wednesday 18 December – Off to a Good Start?

So we booked a mini-cab/taxi for 7am Weds. morning. He arrived early but when he asked us to. confirm which terminal we were going to we were a bit concerned. I think we were his second fare to the airport. But we arrived safely and in good time even travelling in rush hour.

Bag drop was DIY (Do it Yourself) and the drop-off space (previously £1 was now premium drop-off £3) No longer has parking spaces but long lanes to drop-off and the departure area was very different from our last visit. No ranks of checking in desks but a large area for bag drops where a machine reads your passport and boarding pass, you weigh your bag, the machine issues you the tag to go on the bag handle and then gives you a receipt and you trundle your bag to the conveyor belt. Two staff watch over about a dozen machines . . . Lower skilled jobs are being automated out of the economy at an alarming rate.

Despite quite dense fog our flight was only 30 minutes late departing and the flight went smoothly. It was a Thompson/TUI flight so no frills – no maps, movies or flight info and all drinks, food and snacks had to be bought/paid for – so no free alcohol and although people had alcoholic breakfasts at the airport there were no drunken incidents on the plane.

We arrived at Paphos on Cyprus at 4.30pm just in time to see the sunset. By the time we got through automated/biometric passport control, collected our bags and found our transfer coach it was dark.

So at Limasole Harbour our bags were scanned again, we were issued with boat cards which have our name and room numbers and our cabin key. And although Cyprus is two hours ahead of Birmingham we were shattered. It felt much later than 6.30 /4.30GMT by the time we found our cabin. Our package is all inclusive of meals and drinks but there are al a carte restaurants that charge extra and some drinks are charged separately. But you register a credit or debit card to your room and use your boat card/ID to pay for everything. Judith registered her credit card…my “sugar momma” 😉

So after dinner we strolled about to find the gym and the spa and some of the lounging areas…including the library & game room which comes with jigsaw 🧩 puzzles in various stage of incompletion. And went to bed quite early about 10/8GMT. And it was so easy to fall asleep on a moving boat.

Before we were allowed to go to sleep we had a muster drill, reporting to our assigned life boat, but as we were not required to bring our life jackets we just stayed on deck 9 after dinner as our cabin is on deck 5 and lifts aren’t allowed for getting to your muster point.