Cyprus - Getting There

Funny that after writing the title of that last post, I shut up for a good fifteen days. Lots has happened. I've been completely overwhelmed by it to the extent that is has crippled my ability to write about it. Plus I have been concentrating on my "real" writing and we've been away.

To start off, F and I went on a sun vacation to Cyprus. I say "sun vacation" because I think these vacations seem less like a vacation than a real vacation. They are more of a pressure relief valve, a time to relax. To me, a real vacation is one where you travel around and see things. The primary purpose of this one was for F to get a tan and for us to sleep late and lay around doing nothing for a week. We did do a little tour, but it wasn't much. Actually it was more of a day trip to Nicosia than a tour. All the tours they offered sucked.

After arriving late and being bussed to the hotel - The Palm Beach Hotel - we went to sleep and got up early to talk to the onsite travel agent. She was a young woman in her late twenties. She had straight blonde hair and a hair lip. I've been seeing a lot of those lately and I have to say that I feel fortunate to not have one. She actually wore it pretty well. It just looked like she had a short upper lip. Then in her presentation, which was not about her normal area, she caved in (emotionally) in such a way that it made me think "she is constantly aware of that lip." She talked fast and seemed to be rushing through the presentation so that we would get up and go. She was really uncomfortable.

The other couple sitting with us was, of course, Dutch. The whole presentation was in Dutch and the travel agent set the tone by speaking really fast, so everyone spoke really fast and I only caught bits and pieces. Fortunately I had read up on our options. The couple was in their mid-twenties. The woman was blonde and so needed braces to "pull her teeth back into her face." Everytime I see people with teeth like that (straight, but just too far out there) I am grateful that my father is a dentist and that I had braces. They guy had what can only be described as what my friend, Mayo, used to call, "lips like throw pillows." He was gorgeous - much more so than her - and is enjoying his peek beauty. In a few years he will begin to get fat and look rough.

F told me later that when the travel agent asked what types of things we were looking for, he asked how difficult it would be to see some of the mosques in Cyprus. The other couple asked if there was an open air disco. Could we have been more different? And the response of the travel agent to both was, "I don't know that, but you might be able to get some information about that at the reception desk of your hotel." Our travel agent in Tunisia was totally selling us. I was ready to be sold to. I love an excursion. Sell to me! This one was more interested in leaving.