Packing Up and Dinner by the Sea

Today we started to pack up the house and our stuff, ready to leave tomorrow. We will have been here around 75 days and it’s flown by really, even though it seems ages ago we were checking in at Heathrow to come out here. We are so very , very glad we came. Yes, there were some stresses in the journey, and we had to home quarantine here, which people now don’t have to do….. but we used it to good advantage, after a gap of 2 years since our last visit. We’ve done (or rather, Bob has done) so much work on the house and we are so pleased to have not only got it back to it’s lovely best but to have managed to enhance parts of it. We have moved our legal land partitioning on and that is now just going through the last formality at the land registry. By the late autumn it should be done. Most of all we have loved to spend time here, with our friends, with the girls and Leon when they came out, and we have managed to throw off the lockdown gloom and fear that had permeated that long winter back in the UK. We have felt free and safe and that life could be normal again. It was worth coming just for that. We’ve had a simply fantastic time and we count ourselves very blessed that we have this lovely place to come to.

Bob’s first job was to hie off to the hospital in Girne to pick up our PCR test results in written format. He also visited the print shop and printed off our locator form, and our vaccination records. We have them all digitally but it’s good to have a paper back up just in case. When we came back we logged into the VeriFly App. and scanned in the QR codes on the locator form and the PCR test. That completed all the paperwork for UK entry ie Locator, Proof of Double Vaccination (it picked that up from the NHS App), and the PCR test. We’d also entered into it the reference number for the Day 2 test we will take back in the UK. This free app now lets us use express lines at Heathrow on arrival as our paperwork is all pre-checked and we can use the e-passport lanes to move through without queueing. A great system.

I packed most of our clothes and “stuff” into the packing cubes and the cases. We are going back with less than we came with so no worries there. And I started to pack away our tinned food items into the locked sideboard, ready for our next visit. Put some washing on….. It all went pretty fast. Marion came up mid morning for a last chat and a catch up. Showed her the new timer switch for the pool and terrace lights and a couple of other new things she hasn’t seen before.

By lunchtime we were in good shape and so we spent the afternoon beside the pool, and swimming. Had last g&ts out on the dining terrace in the grapevine corner.

Tonight we went to Dogus Adres for our last dinner of this trip. Wow! It was really full, absolutely like old times. It still feels very safe as all the tables are outside and very well spaced and being by the sea, there is a constant breeze over the area. They made a big fuss of us knowing it was our last evening and we had a really enjoyable meal. I had blue cheese steak and Bob had grilled garlic king prawns. My steak wasn’t the best I’ve had there – a bit overdone for someone who likes it blue – but we had a good evening in a lovely ambience. The moon is very nearly full. Lovely over the sea.