Time for a new adventure! (with photos!)

 

Interesting!  When I copy from Word and paste into Blogger, it comes in as a photo and has to be enlarged!  And it's fuzzy and hard to read!  Guess I won't be doing that any more!!

WOOHOO!  I finally was allowed to submit my CyprusFlightPass!!  Slowly but surely everything is coming together!!  YAY!!

Well it's now the evening of the 27th;  but it all seems like one very long day!  

The flight from Tampa to Newark actually had had a little bag o'snacks!  A plastic bag with a bottle of water, a bag of buttery pretzels and a Stroopwafel!  United gets extra credit for the Stroopwafel!

Not so much extra credit for the Newark Airport.  I had to change terminals and the directions to the air train were very goood;  but the gate had been changed and it required me to go upstairs and wander before I found someone who could give me a new and different boarding pass for the next two flights.  Then it was back downstairs and into a very long line for yet another security check!  Shoes, laptop, snacks, the whole nine yards!  And then the lengthy trek to my new gate.  I arrived with just enough time to check out the rest room and begin boarding!  

The flight from Newark to Frankfurt is the longest part of the journey.  We got both dinner and breakfast, such as they were.  Dinner was pasta with a smidge of red sauce and a dash of melted cheese, crackers and white cheddar, salad with Italian dressing, a roll and butter, and what I think was apple cake/strudel?  They do redeem themselves by offering wine with dinner. Breakfast was an Otis Spunkmeyer blueberry muffin and about ten little pieces of cut up fruit.  On the plus side, no one was sitting in the other seat in my row, so I could spread out and pretend to lie down for a nap!  We didn't leave the airport on time because there was a thunderstorm.  We might have slipped under it except that a passenger had to leave the flight and it took forever to offload his luggage.  We wound up leaving about an hour and a half late!  I fretted over my connecting flight for no good reason.  I had a three and a half hour layover and it was now only two hours.  Plenty of time!

                                                  You never know what you'll see in an airport!

Frankfurt was better initially.  I found my gate with little trouble and took the time to freshen up a bit.  I applied just a dab of the glorious perfume Ammar sent me for Christmas and when I sat down, socially distant of course, the man closest to me started a conversation about what an amazing scent that was and what good taste the man who gave it to me must have!  I had planned to blog during this time;  but we wound up chatting all the way through boarding.  Boarding was another experience.  They were doing document checks and people queued up without any idea of who should be in line or why?  We never really got a straight answer and it became ever more confusing when they actually started calling rows - or groups - which they seemed to use interchangeably!  

Jimmy, my new best friend, is an American architect who is currently working in Saudi and has been to lots of places.  We compared travel notes and talked about his new project for more than an hour.  Anyway, we finally got settled on board and away we went.  This time there were no snacks at all!  Well, you could buy something!  It didn't matter;  I came prepared!

Off the plane in Larnaca!!  And Ammar isn't receiving my messages!!  I do get a phone call from the taxi driver;  but I'm not sure I understood what he told me because I was in the really, really long line for passport control and it was loud!  I get though passport control and find baggage claim.  Here comes my brand new suitcase!!  But where is Ammar??  After much debate with myself I decide to outside and as soon as I see the driver with Ammar's name sign, I also see Ammar!!  All is well!  His phone had died and he expected the airport to have charging stations like they have at Queen Alia Airport.  They don't!

At any rate, all is well and we are delivered to the Frangiorgio Hotel, keeping the driver's card for future reference.  He's been a wealth of information and we'd like to use him again.  

We drop off our suitcases, freshen up just a bit and take a cab to a seafood restaurant right on the water where everything is fresh off the boat.  It's called Psarolimano and Ammar orders for us.  There's a salad and garlic shrimp and sea bass with French fries and mixed vegetables and a little dish with olives and tahini and something pink (?) and the hot fresh bread is a little crunchy and has cinnamon in it!  We can't possibly finish all this!  Then we are brought little complimentary desserts!  And Ammar orders watermelon to top everything off!  What a feast!!  Oh, and there are cats everywhere!

The restaurant calls our taxi and on the way home Ammar asks the driver to stop at a little market for bottled water.  The tap water if safe to drink;  but most people seem to prefer the bottled stuff.

Back home for showers and much needed sleep!