Cyprus - Friday 7th May 2010

Today we awoke to the sounds of the artificial waterfall outside bed was nice and warm but I could see shafts of sunlight coming through the blinds.

Day three on Cyprus and today we had a trip to Paphos Zoo planned. Anna was very excited about this last night. Just waiting for Goldy to get up. ZOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

We’ve been reliably informed that the UK has woken to a hung parliament, oh well, still back to the holiday.

10:30 Just woken up, need coffee…..

When everyone was ready, and after a morning frazzle by the pool we set off over the hills to the Paphos Animal and Bird Park. I missed this one last year because I wanted a day to myself and Command and Conquer needed finishing.

This year I got to see the uber cool bird show, wander round looking at all the really cool animals and reptiles. Goldy wussed out when it came to the snakes which is understandable due to his irrational fear.

Zoo is cool! It always worries me visiting zoos in other countries about whether they treat their naminals right, but I am very pleased to say that these guys have done pretty well. It’s quite expensive to get in (€15.50 each) but it’s a nice big place with plenty to see. The bird show is quite fun, the parrots do all those silly things they do at every bird show, then the owls came out and blimey, they’re big! The largest one could have easily stolen a child. After the show, we started the long walk around the site. The whole time you’re accompanied by the calling of peacocks – they’re overrunning the place! Mostly the park has birds, in loads of varieties – tropical birds, several massive birds of prey, and even some that we’d consider boring – wood pigeon for example, but it’s great regardless. On the animal side of things, they’ve got loads of goats and antelope-type creatures like oryx’s (oryxes, oryxii?) along with camels and donkeys, there’s several types of monkeys, marmosets, meerkats and a massive tortoise as well! We went in the reptile house, and see, I think snakes and lizards and stuff are cool, so I was very happy! The big albino python they let you have photos with was in here today, she’d been fed earlier and they have to give her time to digest before being handled again, which was a shame, but she was nice and active in her enclosure, wiggling around all snakey-like.

The zoo was indeed quite excellent, despite the initial dodginess of a 1970s style parrots on bikes show, and the disappointment that the climax of the Parrot and Owl show wasn’t a species-on-species combat experience. From which you may deduce I don’t particularly like parrots. I do hope the escaped goat we saw has made it to safety though. Which in this case might be back into its enclosure. Oh, and being inland and it being midday, it was SERIOUSLY hot. However, it was the first opportunity of the holiday so far to have a Maxibon, the official holiday ice-cream. For the uninitiated, a Maxibon is basically a Wall’s Feast made a bit bigger with half not covered in chocolate but with some squidgy wafers instead. They’re inexplicably not sold in the UK but seem to crop up everywhere else in Europe. And as the saying goes, “It’s not a holiday without a Maxibon!”. Though to be honest the saying could actually say anything, as I just made it up.

After the zoo we went to Agios Georgios (St George). We went there last time. It’s a lovely little harbour with some fishing boats, a small church and a restaurant overlooking the bay and some “tramp holes” which were part of an ancient settlement.

The church here was quite pleasant from the outside, but like many churches inside quite gaudy. I’m sure there’s a niche in the market for a mainstream religion that gets its interior design tips from Ikea and goes for a more minimalist aesthetic.

After an annoyingly expensive and quite small portion of  yeah it really wasn’t that good nom nom-let and chips we headed back along the winding mountainous roads, back to Polis and then home. Apparently, nice view and chips costs a hell of a lot more than chips alone.

I think the Pimp-mobile needs a lot softer suspension for off road and a manual gear box. The automatic just does not have anywhere close to enough power to be of any use at all really. I think I miss the Atoz. The Nissan Note was, thus far, coping better than I’d feared. One thing it did have in its favour was the air con at least seemed to have some oomph to it, being able to make the car cool as opposed to feeling like a very mild breeze coming from someone sucking a mint.

Tonight I think we are off into Polis again to try a different restaurant and to get some wi-fi. We need to map out some geocaches and plan tomorrows walk along from Latchi up the coast to the blue lagoon.

We did indeed get off to Polis and to a place called Chix Chox (as recommended by “the man” Paul from James Villas.

I got off to a rocky start with the owner, as we approached I got all the comments like “what’s the weather like up there?” (I am quite tall).

I thought to myself, there is plenty of competition, taking the piss not a good way of bringing someone into your establishment.

We had a look round at menus for the other restaurants but finally settled on Chix Chox because of the price.

The meals were pretty good actually. We had a 3 course deal, all the local delicacies were included in the menu, and it tasted lovely.

After the meal we logged on and mapped out a number of Geocaches, planning tomorrow’s adventure. Two town center wi-fi’s mapped Chix Chox’s one is on 97A9719769, more coming up when we have them,

Chix Chox food was actually pretty good, even if the owner was a bit of an arse initially, and the free wine was worth having to drink rather than just handy to have in case you ever had to clean the internal workings of some sort of heavy industrial machinery. I had the feta and chilli as a starter, which turned out to be literally a bowl of cheese with chillis in it. Surprisingly though, it was actually very nice, though I’m not sure a massive bowl of incredibly spicy chunky cheese soup would be something I’d have that often. Highlight of the night though (for us, not the staff) was the retirement-age English couple who seemed to be in competition with each other with regard to who could tell the dullest anecdote to a foreign waitress with no concept of what they were on about. While good customer service is one thing, if I owned a restaurant outside of the British Isles I’m not sure I’d be able to bring myself to fire a staff member for telling some old duffer that no, actually I wasn’t really that interested in whether the distance driving to Didcot from Kidderminster (or wherever – I can’t accurately recall because by then I was being bored rigid by proxy) was 2 hours when it should be 1.5 no matter how much the customer complained.

Oh, and then some drunk guy gave a piggyback to his girlfriend in the town square and she faceplanted. Excellent!

Sunparks – Gunderath – Friday 9th October 2009

And off we go on another trip to Germany! I’ve been really looking forward to this one. We are staying in a Sunparks in Germany this time as opposed to the one in Belgium.
The park is in Gunderath which is in the Eifel region. This is on the western border with Luxemburg and is a volcanic area with loads of hills, valleys and craters, awesome!

It was a nice early start (but late for us at 0630hrs). Got to the chunnel in plenty of time and were across in no time. We did a quick trip to Auchan for fuel and munchies (most importantly Lion Bar cereal and milk!)

The drive itself was nice and quick, about 5 hours through France, Belgium and into Germany. We didn’t stop for lunch as we had loads of sweets and pastries to tide us over.

We arrived, got our key from the check in lady (who looked pretty tired and cold by the time we got there (but she had just been filling her happy German face with sweets!) and found our pad. We pretty much have a studio apartment with a small kitchen and bathroom. Just what we need for the two of us.

The buildings are older and look worse on the outside than the Vielsalm houses but on the inside they are a lot more cozy. In stead of being cold and tiled throughout, there is carpet in the entrance hall and laminate in the living room and it has some of the largest radiators I have seen in AGES! Huge bed too!

The centre of the site is a lot busier then Vielsalm with much more to spend money on. The site prices are a lot more than the local shops so we need to do a trip out tomorrow for supplies.
I am looking forward to going there and having the all you can eat German Buffet though, sounds ace!

We went for a walk round the site and down to the Stausee, a small dammed lake at the top end of Gunderath. I think we went there at just the right time, the sun was setting and the reflections on the lake of the sky and autumn colours were a photographers wet dream,… (except for doing a nude shot of Girls Aloud - lol). Don’t forget the crazy fish! I shall explain…

As we were walking around the lake getting some photos we heard a heavy splash and saw some big ripples spreading out, but none of the ducks looked like they’d moved, so we ignored it and carried on round. Then, as we were just passing over the dam we just turned to look at the water at the right time and saw a fish jump fully out of the water! Twice! Not sure what type of fishy he was, don’t think it was a carp as it was slimmer and quite silvery, perhaps a trout? I dunno, I’m not much of a fish person, but it was certainly big enough to feed a couple of people quite well. I think it was trying to catch the bugs on the surface. We waited for a while in case it did it again so we could get a photo, but it didn’t. Shortly after we met a man and his excellent dog. It was big and hairy.

Gunderath is a very small town that has a couple of restaurants supplying people that need to get out of the prison camp with normal German food at a reasonable price. Everything was below €10 and from the menu looked TASTY. Will definitely be going there for din dins soon.

On the way out we saw some gentlemanly graffiti saying “Gangsta” and some pretty little ponies. We thought the place would be excellent for our mate Mr J. He really wants a small holding and almost every home in the town has a paddock and access to a stream. It was brilliant, and really quiet as well.

We headed back to our flat and had a sit down with some tele before, at about 2000hrs, my eyes closed and didn’t open again until the following morning, lightweight.

It rained super hard during the night and woke me up once or twice, but it sounded very cool.