Our First Cruise - Sunday 09/05/2010 Limassol

We arrived in Limassol, Cyprus, early and set out on foot with nothing planned after breakfast. There had been trips offered by the ship but nothing had particular appeal to us so we decided to do the independent thing. On the quayside we were given a map of the area and on leaving the port we met up with Richard, the table tennis player, and his wife Margaret. We decided to split the cost of a taxi into town and for 20 euros we were dropped of in the centre. The same experience booked through the ship would have been a shuttle coach costing £16 each. In the town centre there was a really attractive castle to visit but we could not pay for entrance because the cashier had no change. We moved on deciding to return later when we had broken down some of our big notes.
We remained together and soon found that we had much in common but Richard and Margaret were veteran cruisers and we picked up many hints from them during the two weeks. We walked along the seaside promenade and passed through a market and a park where a church fete was in full swing. We stopped for tea on the front before returning to the town centre now equipped with plenty of change; sadly the castle was now shut because it was Sunday!
We decided to walk back to the ship and it was a pleasant stroll of about 50 minutes which passed quickly in easy conversation.
We separated back on the ship and Julia and I had a chill out in the pool, one of the benefits of being retired is that we now holiday out of the school holidays so the ship’s passengers were mainly adult and the two swimming pools are designated family and adult – we sat contentedly in the adult pool.
Afternoon tea called to us and we had tea, scones, jam and clotted cream on the rear of the ship taking in the view of Cyprus. Tea is an issue for us but Ocean Village was passable in this respect, they stocked good quality teabags and provided boiling water, we even found skimmed milk was available in one restaurant. We usually brought two mugs of boiling water with the teabag in already, a spare mug for the used bags and a fourth mug with milk to our table thus we could let the tea brew before adding the milk. The only problem tended to be the over-attentive staff who would whisk anything away that they thought was finished with, until we were more aware of this we would return with a second mug of tea each only to find the milk or spare mug had departed.
We were keeping a close eye on the time because we had used the ship’s newspaper to plan a full day of activities, at 6.00pm there was live coverage of the final matches in the soccer Premiership. We got seated in the Oval, the ship’s pub where Man Utd v Stoke fixture was being shown while updates kept coming through from Chelsea v Wigan. To win the title Manchester had to do better than Chelsea and the northerners did their part by beating Stoke but Chelsea were not to be denied and they demolished Wigan to win the title.
We were quick to get some dinner in order to be ready to go to the ship’s cinema to see “Crazy Heart” starring Jeff Bridges at 9.30pm. It was an enjoyable film and a good experience particularly as we struggle to get to the pictures at home and here it was included in the price!
Our day was not yet complete; we went from the cinema to the Marquee and watched the late night comedian who finished off the day brilliantly.