North Cyprus

In June Ed and I went to Kyrenia, North Cyprus for seven nights. I got a deal from one of these services that emails you daily deals on all sorts of shit. I got a deal on seven nights in Cyrprus for two, including breakfast and lunch daily, airport transfers, hotel, and flight for only 660 pounds, man. That's way cheaper than any vacation I ever took in Korea, especially since it covers two people. Jezum.

North Cyprus is owned by Turkey, so people speak Turkish there, but of course everyone speaks English. It's pretty Anglo there, since tons of Brits vacation there and buy land there for expatriation and summer homes, blah blah. Because of that, but I think more because so many people got the same deal as we did and also because the travel agency running the deal has a direct line to the hotel, it was pretty much all British people from age 50 up. I think I was the only American, though there were a number of younger people, some with kids. It was a nice looking hotel, despite being riddled with ugly old limeys.

So we had a long train ride to London Stansted airport, which is normally a bad choice, but obligatory for the deal, and kind of a long flight with no free meal, drinks--not even water was included in the flight price. This is Pegasus Air. Do not recommend. We'd brought some sandwiches and snacks, but had planned on a nice full meal on the plane. I was getting pretty sick by the end, but luckily they had some sandwiches on the second leg of the flight that were not as expensive as the hot meal. It was good to have the prearranged bus full of old people waiting for us when we got there, and I think we were the last ones on, so we didn't have to wait to leave. The hotel restaurant was also conveniently open until like 2am, so we got to have some crappy food when we got there, after czeching in. There was a kitty there! I petted her. I saw her often while we were there.

Here are some pictures of our nice room with balcony overlooking the grounds/pool:

It's Ed on the Bed. He's precious.

You can catch a glimpse of the ocean in this one. We weren't really comfortably walking distance from the beach, which was kind of a drag, but I guess that's okay considering the price.

There's a castle nearby called St. Hilarion, which they light up at night.

The hotel keeps some peafowl, including one very confused peacock, who was constantly presenting, but not necessarily to the peahens, who couldn't be bothered, anyway. Sometimes to us, sometimes to the wall. It's kind of sad, really. There were a couple tall cages nearby with some birds that were very small and somewhat colorful that sounded like squeezy dog toys, and also some parakeets (budgies), but we forgot to take pictures. Damn it.

Anyway, these damn peafowl, I didn't know they were there our first night, because it was too dark to see them when we walked by, but they made this loud whooping sound every once in a while that made me jump out of my skin a few times, and I didn't know what the hell it was. Ed thought it was a riot.