As someone rightly said: today has been a bit of a busman’s holiday for us! We’ve been in Limassol, Cyprus for the day, and because we have a home on the island, we come here reasonably frequently. We were arriving in Limassol when we woke up at 7am. It was already a lovely day. 20C at 8am. Not bad. Got up to about 26C by early afternoon. Just a lovely temperature, blue skies, light breeze….. as the day went on, a few ominous looking clouds appeared from Troodos but they never really developed into anything.

We had decided not to do any of the tours, having already been to all the places, and we debated a bit about whether to hire a car and drive up to our house in the north. But in the end, we decided that we’d just see jobs that needed doing, and in any case we will be staying there from mid May, so…. We decided to just have a quiet day enjoying Limassol, and doing a bit of shopping and using the internet. Plus it was the first time since we left the UK in early January that we could use our phones under our contracts without incurring extra charge (being back in the contract area…. No… I can’t bring myself to say back in the EU).

After breakfast, we got the free shuttle bus from the ship into the centre of Limassol. It dropped us at the marina, right on the edge of the old town, where all the best shopping and restaurants are. We spent a few hours wandering around the streets, looking in the shops, drinking coffee… I have the most difficult feet….. well… they could be worse. I don’t have bunions or anything like that. But I have the highest instep in the world and in addition the widest feet… They are like little shovels. And it’s got worse since I retired from the corporate life and stopped wearing heeled court shoes every day. Anyway…. I have been looking for a pair of walking shoes/boots that will fit me, ready for our holiday in the Rockies in the autumn. And today, I found a pair in a shop in Limassol Old Town. A brand called Mephisto and they fit my feet sooooo well. Really comfortable and adjustable at various points which is unusual in a shoe that is not a sandal. Very pleased with them. I shall break them in when we get to Rome and try them over the cobbles there.

So, that was a major success. I then set about finding a nail salon because my nails are now looking the worse for wear since I left Goa. Found one but they couldn’t fit me in! A posse of other cruise ladies beat me to it. We then walked 20 minutes to another using Google maps, to find it wasn’t there any more. Gave up. Will just look tatty till we get to Rome. Walked back to Limassol Castle and found a table in a lovely quiet taverna there on the square. It was sooooo quiet in the whole old town. If the ships hadn’t been in… it would have been like a ghost town. We sat there for about 3 hours, had 2 glasses of wine and some lunch, used their wifi and caught up on some stuff. Just a lovely interlude. No one bothered us. Portions were pretty massive.

Then we decided we needed to get some wine so we walked to LIDL, having tried a few other small places in the locality first. It was a smallish LIDL and they didn’t have any wine boxes but we took a chance and bought 3 bottles which will take us to Rome and a bit beyond (hopefully we will stock up in Rome too). I was looking for the insanely good sun tan cream Daisy bought in Nicosia LIDL last year but they didn’t have the same one. I bought some anyway and will look again in Rome and Barcelona. Spanish LIDLs have incredible skincare products that you can’t get anywhere else. Really really high tech ones, like The Ordinary. I have no idea why they are just in Spanish LIDLs. But that’s a tip for you!!!! Buy them up.

Shuttled back to the ship about 345. No probs getting on with our wine! It’s never a problem in a port that the cruise ship trusts enough to do the scanning of your hand luggage on their behalf. Only if the cruise ship does the scanning on board AND its an American ship. Cunard and P&O are always very lax on bringing alcohol on board anyway as long as you don’t rock up with a trolley full of whisky or something.

Freshened up and went out on the terrace aft deck for the sailaway. Managed lots of chats with the girls today which was one of the best things of all about being back on our phone contracts. We were moored up against the Costa Victoria who we have been sailing with off and on since Dubai. We had a reggae/ska band playing on deck from about 5pm for our sailaway which was around 530. It was really nice because lots of the Costa passengers came up to their aft decks and joined in!!!! The band caught on and starting addressing some of the music to them and organising dance and wave offs between the two ships.

Eventually, we sailed away. Bob and I shared our bottle of Cunard fizz out on the deck. Got some very nice sunset shots. Tonight we ate in the buffet – couldn’t get it together to go to the formal dining room. Then went to the show in the theatre which was the main Cunard dance show, Apassionatta. We’ve seen it before but its very good. We are now heading west to Sicily, then north through the straits of Messina towards Rome on Sunday.