Well we were booked for our lovely week or so with Derek and Ellaine in Cyprus. Derek had booked the Northern part of the Island (thank goodness- no euros) So me and Annette had gone off on the metro and rail to get to the airport without any problems, and i was quite looking forward to it.
Annette was a bit put out because we were only three hours or so early so we went to get seats we had booked for the flight. We ended up sitting down in a cramped seat with the suitcase and waiting. Eventually we got called forward and boarded the aircraft, which to be fair seemed quite a good plane: leg room, toilets and scoff. There was quite a bit of public announcements about meals and snacks so everything went reasonably well. I sat listening to the tv shows and music, scoffing and just waiting for the plane to land.
We had soon forgotten all about the idiots quoting for the new gas boiler, etc. I thought they were all a bit over the top, but we had to wait until they got back to us on our return. Anyway we were out on the flight and all went well until we landed in Cyprus. Things were not going very well from here in. we got shuffled into an upstairs waiting room and told to wait for the flight call. Now seeing as I’d lost my hearing aid getting on the damn plane this would be good.
Annette decided to go to the bog and I waited for the flight announcement and got a mixed message about the flight to Cyprus, told Annette on her return but, when we found out about it all we had missed the flight and had to go down to the offices of Air Cyprus to re-book our morning flight. This was not quite what we had expected as we ended up waiting at a massive airline desk to tell them we had missed the flight because they had cocked up the transfer times and boy was that was just the half of it.
We first got told to get back upstairs and await our flight but, after a few hours slogging around the airport, we found that we couldn’t move without our departure tickets. So back down we went to the flight decks and got told we had to sort out tickets from another corner desk over to the left and very well covered up. We got through and Annette, feeling very tired, managed to get us booked onto a 0730hrs flight for the next morning. This was quite a disaster and resulted in us sitting in the corner awaiting the woman to call us forward. Annette was on the verge of smashing the desk up before we got the tickets sorted out. Well, we thought we had but, then we had to go back to the idiots on the flight desks.
After about half an hour, we got the tickets sorted out and had to move back upstairs to await the flight. Annette would tell you this was about 4 hours, not far short off a colossal cock up by any bodies standards. Back upstairs, we found out an empty seat and tried to get some sleep. Bad luck that we had found someplace where the local in charge of the baggage store was sitting in the row of clothes by us and chatting to some girlfriend somewhere of another as load as possible. I was not impressed and went for a walk around to see where the bogs were and what else was going on. It was an awful night by any means, Annette managed to sleep once or twice , in between some Chinese barging in beside her and trying to keep her awake. All in all the Chinks were not very well received by Brits.
Finally we got the call to go down for our flight. After all our upping and downing, we had to go downstairs for our flight. Of course, this was Turkey and the line for the flight quickly became a giant jumble with people just pushing through where ever they could. We were stuck in the line when they announced that they were opening a side gate to get people through. Annette got through all right and I got left behind with the masses. Fortunately Annette got one of the attendants to let me through and we were once again on route for Cyprus. I have to say that there were many thousands of people that would be missing their flights, unless some miracle was about to greet them as we left.
So back onto our one hour flight to Cyprus, eventually. We arrived on time and found that our luggage had been left for us to pick up on our arrival. They both looked a tadge the worse for the travel. So now we had to find out how to get to our hotel which as it happens was somewhere on the Northern coast, as we were in the middle it would be a bit of a do. Annette found out the hotels phone number and rang for the collection, which as it turned out was not going to come as they promised. So we had a walk up to the taxi rank where they had some sort of cafe and found out we had to wait another 45 minutes before anyone turned up for us. So Annette decided we would go back and find one of the local taxis. 15 Cypriot cash later (about 40 minutes) we were finally at our hotel.
Derek and Elaine were both waiting for us and after a quick drink we found out they too had been disrupted on their way out to Cyprus, almost 18 hours late, because the Turkish airline had broken down before getting to Cyprus. We exchanged the horror tales, had a drink and went to sleep until we could get back out and catch up on Cyprus.