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Holiday travels 2001This year's holiday was a rather hastily arranged week in Cyprus, from which we returned on 5th December. Weather-wise, there was a large depression hanging over the eastern end of the Mediterranean all week, resulting in some mixed weather, heavy storms one day, and snow in the mountains around Troodos. Most of our pictures were taken on the last two days, after we had spent a day in our apartment mopping up water which was running under the door from outside.
The holiday started with the confiscation of a potentially dangerous weapon as we went through the security checks at the airport. Martin always travels with a Waiter's Friend (corkscrew + bottle opener) as an essential part of his hand luggage, but since Sept 11th this has fallen into the same class as knives and guns, and was removed after the bag emerged from the X-Ray. It was interesting to see it deposited into a large tray containing a sizeable collection of nail scissors and similar small items. Irritatingly, the apartment didn't have a corkscrew amongst its utensils, and Cyprus seemed to be devoid of decent replacements. We bought a "tire bouchand" type, which had such a blunt screw that it pushed the cork into the bottle on the second attempt to use it. Then we managed to find a Waiter's Friend type, but that snapped with the screw stuck in the cork before opening its second bottle, so Martin's Christmas present this year (from a decent cooks' supplies shop in Manchester) was a new travelling corkscrew! And the moral is - don't carry one in your hand luggage! The bad luck with the corkscrew was more than cancelled out by some good luck with our hire car. When booking the holiday package, travel between the airport and the resort was charged at an extra £15 each. We normally get a car for at least part of the week, and given the low season price of around £80/week, a further £30 off would make it an irresistible £50, so we booked to pick up a car from the airport. Now I should have remembered from the last time we were in Cyprus that the hire car was well below par, because although we were told on arrival that we'd been "upgraded" from a group B to C, the car itself was closer to the Rent-a-Wreck variety. A Hyundai "escort" clone, with 70K on the clock, and seats that had long given up giving support, it was dirty and dusty and made you wish you'd put on overalls before getting into it. On the way to the resort Kathie noticed that the indicators weren't working, so next day we took it back to the nearest depot, and much to our surprise were given a nice clean Mitsubishi Galant. I think it was only because the few cars they had there were all parked in a confined row, and the girl who was looking after the place couldn't be bothered shunting them all around to get a different one out. Wow, what a difference! Really nice seats, auto transmission (with semi-auto mode), full climate control (air con), central locking, electric everything - even a button to fold the mirrors in for getting into tight spaces. Oh, and a full tank of petrol too! Only thing I couldn't fully get used to was having the indicator and wiper stalks reversed, but it was the same on the Hyundai so I think it's a Cyprus preference. Other than that, a really nice car, and I was sad to give it back at the end of the week, which is not often the case with holiday cars.
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This makes it sound worse than it was, and in fact we got off quite
lightly compared to some areas of the island where there was quite severe flooding, and at
Limassol a freighter broke free from its anchor and was washed onto the beach. We came
across it the next day when two tugs were trying to refloat it, with little success.
