Our surprise location.... On to the beaches of larnaca, cyprus

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Our surprise destination: cyprus. We didnt decide o do this part of the trip ahead of time. We thought we's want to spend a few more days at the end of the tour in egypt, but we knew early on that we didnt. Also because of the constant travelling we thought it would be nice to hit the beach for a bit. Cyprus is pretty close to egypt and a friend of ours on the tour knew someon who loved it so we booked our flights and it was easy . 

Today was quite an uneventful travel day.  We were dropped off by taxi at the bus station and we took the VIP bus (safe for tourists or for people who wanted to pay more for a nicer coach) to the Cairo airport. We were originally going to take the train but this was much easier. The bus took the Alexandria-Cairo desert road which was interesting because you drove through the very lush Nile river delta where everything was quite green. As you approached Cairo,  it became more desert like and I could see that a lot of resort communities were popping up here (dad : maybe you should consider another egyptian investment here.. Hopefully with no terrorist attacks). The ride was very uneventful and as we drove through Cairo, we were kind of relieved to be leaving this country. The bus ride took about 3.5 hours (mainly because Cairo is so big) and we were early at the airport. 

The flight itself was only 1 hour 40 minutes and then we were in civilization! It was duh a weird feeling in the larnaca, cyprus airport. We've been travelling through the middle east now for 3 weeks so it was a culture shock to come back to this! Of course here the signs are in English and Greek and everything is spotless, lots of white people around and they drive on the left side of the road. I did everything I could to stop myself from saying,  shokran (thank you in Arabic). Here's some things that we noticed right away, having just come from the middle east:

1) it's illegal to litter (so it's clean everywhere!)
2) people are not allowed to be on the highways (so there is no waiting for a minibus)
3) drivers stay in their own lanes (albeit its on the left side)
4) grass, not sand
5) girls can show shoulders here! And many wear even less than that 
6) We're not a rare breed here (lots of white tourists)
7) apparent obedience of the speed limit
8) seat belts in the taxis

We got to the hotel so smoothly, except they made us wait for our room. Although it was 8pm, the room wasn't ready but they bought us coffee anyways. Then when we went up to the room ww discovered they just had single beds so went back down to the lobby to complain and they had another room available but the view wasn't as good (but you can see the ocean) and the deco wasn't as new (so what?). They sent a bottle of wine up to our new room for their apologies. I like that kind of service! This place claims to be a five star hotel. I think its more of a four star, because it's still quite simple, but it's the areas only 5 star so I guess you can't complain. Anyways, now time to relax on the Mediterranean for the next 4 days!

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