1^st October –  Monday morning

Well unfortunately this morning we had another blip, as apparently there are no cars to rent in the area that we are in as they are all booked, the earliest we could book one was for Wednesday morning, so its just a case of waiting for two days, in a way I guess it’s done us good as it has made us relax for a whole week, and I have to say I was surprised this evening to see on my Fitbit watch that my heart rate was down to 58 beats a minute, which I haven’t seen in months., so this rest has done us good, we have done bits of walking here and there and even taken naps when we felt like it, it must have been needed and I think we are both feeling refreshed and full of energy again, I have to say I am loving the heat, most days it is between 27 and 31 degrees which is lovely and hot and the evenings are either hot or warm depending on if there is a breeze, I am totally loving not being cold or chilly and being in shorts and t shirts all the time, it is amazing.

3^rd October

Well it is now a few days later, we finally got a car hire today and went exploring, there aren’t too many houses for rent but we did manage to find one that we liked in Tsada, it is high up in the hills and so its cooler than Paphos, of course not knowing the area’s we don’t know if we will like it or not, so we have decided to take it for one year and hopefully by then we will know the area’s better, it’s a lovely house though and after living in a tiny English house this will be a nice treat, its a detached house, all open plan which we both love and it has an amazing swimming pool which you can see through the patio doors from the living room. Tsada is around four to eight degrees cooler than Paphos so I think we might like it up in the hills, the scenery as we were driving up to Tsada was amazing and totally took my breath away, everyone that I had spoken to had said Paphos was the best place to live but as we were driving inland a bit more and going up into the hills I totally fell in love with Cyprus and it was how I had imagined it in my mind…..so we are going to accept the house we looked at, and hopefully be able to move in around the 18^th October, so not long to wait really as today is the 3^rd October.

Last night we met a lovely English couple called Linda & Graham who live two doors away from the Airbnb where we are staying at the moment, they are English and have lived here for around 11 years, they popped over for a drink, and they have said I can pop round in the morning and log onto their internet which was lovely of them, not having internet or a TV that works in the Airbnb is a nuisance.

11^th October

The one thing we are having problems with at the moment is food as everything over here is meat orientated, they don’t cater for vegetarians in the supermarkets so most of the dinners I have cooked have not been very good, so I am going to have to learn some new recipes but hopefully soon we will have time to play more in the kitchen, I don’t even seem to be able to find any fish I like, a few nights ago we had catfish, it was the only fish I could find in the village shop and oh it was awful lol, anyway I am sure we will figure it out when we are more settled.

I read earlier that Tsada where our long term rental is gets a bit more rain and it goes colder in the winter up in the hills, it will be interesting to see what the seasons are like around the island, I wonder if we will prefer it in the hills or if we will prefer it further down in Paphos, I guess we will see…..

We went through a terrible time with Maggie a few days ago….it really was a bit traumatic, one of the days she accidently did her business out of the back of the house where it is a bit like a balcony and not in the courtyard, and as I went out to her she realized what she had done and I think she thought I was coming to tell her off, so she went running down the steps only the steps lead to nowhere, it’s just a sort of drop off of about eight feet, sort of like a small cliff edge, so she ran down these very steep stone steps and when she got to the bottom she couldn’t stop herself and she went flying over the edge into the field below, I saw her land on her side and I honestly thought she was dead, the whole thing was horrifying to be honest and I just stood there yelling, Nick came running out and somehow got down the edge to the field below and Maggie was ok, I have no idea how she was ok as it should have broken her bones or killed her to be honest with the way she landed, we couldn’t get her back up the way she had come down as the ledge is to high so Nick walked her through the field and up the hill round to the front of house and she was fine, we both worried she was a bit achy from her fall so we started giving her painkillers for a few days, anyway she seemed as right as rain and we kept watching her for days in case she looked in pain, I do keep going over it in my head though and its pretty horrifying picturing it all again, but I keep telling myself she is fine, I wish I didn’t worry so much.

We got the keys at the beginning of the week to the house in Tsada that we have agreed to rent, so we popped up there to have another look, the neighbor’s that are directly behind our house and overlook our garden came over to introduce themselves while we were there as they have been paid to clean the house for us before the furniture arrives, they are a younger couple with a ten year old and a four year old, I think I will enjoy having children around and they seem like a nice couple.

The village center of Tsada is quite small really and about an eight  minute walk from the house, so apart from a shop on the outskirts of the village there really isn’t anything more apart from a coffee shop which looks nothing like an English coffee shop, there is also a taverna which is similar to a pub but looks nothing like a pub, we go there for coffee when we pop to the house and we have gotten to the know the owner Joanna who has lived in the village all her life, she is a lovely Cypriot lady and she was telling me that her cousin comes to the village once a week to do hairdressing so she has said she will take me to her cousins house once and then I can go on my own afterwards, apparently she only charges fifteen euro’s for a wash cut and blow dry, I think my hairdresser in Ryde was around 32 pounds….there is also an old Cypriot man next to the taverna that cuts men’s hair so that should be fun for Nick lol.

The neighbor’s at the back of the new house were telling us how cold it gets in the winter up in the hills, so I am a bit worried, but their cold might be totally different from my cold so I will have to wait and see, at the moment I am still in shorts and t shirts and still haven’t worn a cardigan, I am sure I will moan when I have to start wearing different clothes, but the weather every day is still staying at 27 degree’s which is still too hot for Maggie to go out during the day but she is enjoying her morning and evening walks and now and again if the day is breezy we drive her to the beach at Mandria for a walk

Well it is now a day or two later, Linda and Graham took us to Limassol to pick our car up from the port which was lovely of them, but it wasn’t as straight forward as we were hoping and with paperwork and trying to explain to different people about our car, the whole thing took hours, tomorrow we have to go back to Limassol and meet with the customs guy and the clearing agent for more paperwork which I know is going to take more hours of getting lost and waiting for paperwork to be done, we also found out it is going to cost more money than we thought, as the roof comes down on the car and even though it has a hard top they class it as a sports car., anyway we finally got over the disappointment of spending more money at some point, and we have the car now even though all of the paperwork isn’t done yet, but even after spending more hours tomorrow sorting things out there is still a lot more to do, like the emissions certificate, another MOT even though we just had one done in the UK, then registration, then the plates, road tax, and that’s without all the customs and port stuff,  plus insurance, I have a feeling its one of those things that is going to go on for quite a while.

17^th October – Wednesday

We heard today from from the removal people and they want to deliver the furniture Friday morning which is the 19^th at 8.30am, so that was good news, so I contacted the lady whose Airbnb we are in and told her we would be leaving at 8am Friday and to let me know what we needed to pay, and she was lovely and said she would give us one free night, so it didn’t cost as much as we thought it was going to, so this evening I have been scrubbing and cleaning her house so we can leave it looking really lovely for her, although I have been told not to bother cleaning as they get cleaners in when someone leaves, but still at least the cleaner will have an easier time of it lol.

So we are finally moving into our own place, it is really exciting and I can’t wait to unpack all the things I have missed and have my own things around me, and my own comfy chair and my own bed.

18^th October – Thursday

Well today we got a phone call from the moving company to say the workers at the port were on strike, so we won’t be moving on Friday now,  they said possibly next Tuesday they could deliver the furniture,  but she didn’t give me a time so I thought that it probably wasn’t definite, i felt so fed up as i was looking forward to getting settled, but then they called back a few hours later and said that the people at the port said they will release our container and we will definitely have it delivered Monday morning at 10.30am, she said the crew have been booked so it is definitely for definite, it did cheer us up a bit as even if it’s just a day earlier than Tuesday it is still a whole day.

Anyway we took ourselves and Maggie off to the beach and went to the beach café for a drink, I never drink during the day but I treated myself to half a lager, I do like the lager out here, it’s called Keo and its really lovely and for a half pint it costs 2 euro’s and 2.50 for a pint so pretty cheap for a drink, and then we walked along the sea front, although I really wanted to be paddling as I walked but Maggie isn’t allowed onto the beach, but there are some benches along the way so we gave Maggie lots of sit downs, and it did make the day go a bit faster.

20th October – Saturday

We went out for a lovely meal with Linda and Graham in Mandria this evening, the taverna had grape vines hanging down which looked beautiful, it was a fun night with both of them.

22^nd October  –  Monday and yes it is finally MOVING DAY

Peter Morton’s removals arrived at the house, and it was really exciting, I think at this point we just needed to feel settled and we needed to sleep in our own bed and sit on our own chairs.

The guys were lovely and we made them endless cups of tea and coffee, they worked tirelessly and every box and every piece of furniture went into the right room, they did an amazing job.

When they were taking the boxes from the truck to bring into the house I had to tick the boxes off a sheet of paper to confirm we received each box, to my surprise there were 121 boxes.

In all it took us three full days to unpack, 121 boxes is a lot, it was mainly because of the unwrapping and the great job that the shippers in England did, they had more than triple wrapped everything in huge huge sheets of paper really tightly, one small drinking glass was wrapped in three huge sheets of paper so each item I unpacked took about five minutes, even one small bottle of nail varnish was wrapped in two huge pieces of paper, on the second day of unwrapping I was so fed up as it just took forever and I started to dread every box that I saw lol, but we only had two small breakages so I guess that shows what an amazing job they did really as I have heard the containers really get knocked around a lot on their way over.

27^th October

So we are finally unpacked and more or less sorted out now, it was a busy week though, normally when we move it just takes one day to unpack and sort things out and the following day we hang pictures, so this move was a new experience for us, but thankfully it is all done, everything is unpacked and pictures are on the walls and everything is looking nice, and I never want to unwrap another thing lol.

The neighbours at the back of our house bought some micro beer over one of the days as a welcome present which was sweet of them, they seem a lovely young couple, and now and again in the evening I hear the kids laughing which is really nice.

It was lovely moving from the Airbnb, Katie’s two dogs kept barking at Maggie which she didn’t like and there were a lot of flies from all of the cats that she was feeding, thankfully there are no barking dogs where we are now and no flies, I think we were also really ready to see a proper TV and have some internet, although for four days I didn’t manage to go on my laptop at all as it was a bit chaotic and even though we have the television set up we don’t actually have TV to watch as over here of course all the programs are Greek, but there are a few things that we can sign up for, the cheapest is called TV Mucho and costs forty eight pounds a year after we have bought the android box so we will try that one first, its english TV, only everything is two hours behind the UK, so Coronations Street we would get at half nine instead of half seven, so we will give it a try and forty eight pounds for the year is really cheap, so even if it doesn’t work out we haven’t lost very much.

After our days of chaos emptying all of the boxes, on the Thursday I would have liked to have stayed in and had a rest as I was feeling pretty poorly, I think one of the removal men had a cold and of course I caught it,  but the cupboards were bare so we had to go and do grocery shopping and some more running around to do with the car which honestly seems like it is never ending, but now thankfully the cupboards are now full and we have all the paperwork for the car finally, so we now just need to go and get the car registered, then the MOT, and then the road tax and new insurance, it really feels like it has been ongoing for a while now, but we are still glad we bought the car over, as we know there aren’t any problems with it, so at least we have something reliable that we know runs pretty perfectly, so it was all worth the running around.

We did have a storm that started Wednesday night, there was a lot of thunder and lightning, and Thursday was cloudy and windy, it was our first day of experiencing chilly weather, it really made a change from hot sunshine, although Maggie was happy as she got an afternoon walk lol, but the following day it was back to nice weather again, today its 23 degrees and next week its going up to 28 degree’s again, I don’t think I will ever take this warmth for granted, it is nice in the hills though as with the kitchen window open and the patio doors open we get a nice breeze going through the house, we also discovered we have a solar panel on the roof of the house, which gives us free hot water every day, there is a switch for a heater so if the sun doesn’t shine we can still have hot water, and so far with showers and washing up it seems like enough and we haven’t had to put the water heater on yet.

So far I am finding most things cheaper over here, there isn’t any council tax as such, just a thirteen pound charge every month to get the bins emptied which I think we have to pay for yearly, we were paying £125 just for one month in the UK, I have heard that water is also cheaper, we are not sure about electricity, but it will be interesting to see what our first bills are.

Slowly we are finding some of the cheaper shops, a few days ago we found one called Smarts, and I really liked the prices in there, so it seems if you shop around there are some good deals to be had, one of the removal men was telling me his wife goes to three different shops to do her shopping as then she gets the best deals, so we will do the same, I guess it’s all just learning, we bought our little freezer that we had from the UK, it’s just a small under the counter freezer with four drawers, so we took the dishwasher out of the kitchen here and have put the little freezer under the counter instead, I find it easier being vegetarian to make bigger batches of dinners and freeze them as certain things are time consuming.

Nick actually cooked the dinner last night as I was still feeling unwell, and it was edible sort of, he did add to much salt and did add to many stock cubes, there were a few things wrong with it but I did manage to eat half of it, and then praised him up lots lol, I really want to encourage him to cook a bit more as he will need things to do now and again now he is retired, so hopefully I can encourage him to try making new things, I love playing around in the kitchen and he has never had a chance to see if he likes it so we will see what happens.

The house itself is lovely but to be honest I think it’s a bit big for the both of us, I think I would prefer something smaller but I wonder if it’s because I just got used to small houses when living in the UK, and maybe this isn’t too big for us, I guess we will know what we want over time, it’s all open plan which I do prefer so that is something we both like, and we definitely need to buy some rugs as the ceramic tiles are really cold on the feet, but I guess that will be nice in the summer, I think everyone puts their rugs down in the winter and takes them up in the summer, we did have one rug that got stored in the shed in the UK and it has a few big mouse nibbles on it, but I do like the rug so I will tape the edges when I can find some edging tape.

I am finding it amazing having more space, I actually have most of my clothes hanging up for a change as all of the bedrooms have lovely big wardrobes, and the kitchen has enough cupboards to put everything away which also makes a lovely change, the only two things I can see wrong with all of it is the sun isn’t in the right place lol, I would have liked the sun to have come in through the windows more which I have read helps to keep it warm in winter, and I am still getting used to be the patio being overlooked by the neighbor’s, but its only their bedroom windows that overlook us, but their house is quite close,  I have sat out a few times and I am trying not to feel like I am being watched, hopefully I can get over it at some point and not care too much.

30^th October

Well I spent half my week last week cleaning, and the other half we spent still running around getting the car sorted out, it has felt like a really busy week again, but I am slowly getting there and hope to have caught up with all the cleaning in the next day or two, also the windows need cleaning as it looks like they haven’t been done for a while, the young couple were supposed to clean them but said to me there was no point as it might rain lol, I just nodded and smiled, but it’s a good job I didn’t have that attitude in the UK as our windows would never have gotten cleaned lol, the young guy is also cleaning our pool for us every week as we are paying for it in with the rent, so he is going to come twice a week in the summer and once a week in the winter, he is doing an amazing job though and the pool is spotless.

The pool we have in the back garden takes up most of the patio, it’s strange not having grass but it’s going to be nice not having to cut it or worry about it with lack of rain, it does look lovely though, but because the overnight temperature has gone down the water is really cold, but I am sure next summer it will be lovely, our next door neighbor who is the owner of this house actually has a small bit of grass in his back garden, I think it’s the first piece of grass I have seen since being over here, I guess it’s because of the heat, anyway we met our landlord next door who owns the house we are in, he owns all three houses in our row, they seem a really nice couple and they came and introduced themselves to us, they only come up at weekends as they have a house in the city, they told us how big it was and it is obviously a mansion, but anyway they do seem nice.

Maggie isn’t doing too well this week, her walks seem to be getting shorter and shorter and over the last few days they are literally about fifteen minutes, its mainly her arthritis which is a shame, I hate to see her limping so much, the pills she is on were working so well on her but at the moment they don’t seem to be working as well, so we will give her another week or two and then take her to the vets to see if they can come up with anything new.

We finally got our S1 medical forms through the post from England, we were supposed to have them weeks ago delivered to the Airbnb house we stayed in, but they must have gotten lost so we called them up and finally got them through a few days ago, so now we have to find something called the Citizens Centre and they are supposed to send them off to Nicosia to be registered and then we should get issued with medical cards so we can then register with a doctor, so hopefully we can do that this week sometime, I really am feeling like I need a few days of just staying at home as its feels like its been so busy lately.

We signed up for the British TV called TV Mucho, and it works really well, and definitely worth the forty eight euro’s for the year, it has been so nice watching British TV in the evening, so at the moment we are watching it though one of the laptops but one of the days we will go and check out the android boxes which we will be able to watch it through, it is a good deal and it gives us seven day catch up TV from the previous week and also live TV, it is so good having TV again.

Our daytime temperatures are still hot and we are still in shorts and t shirts and this week the temperature is at 28 degree’s which is really hot, but we are noticing now that the evenings are getting colder and so during the day the house is a nice temperature and we can have the doors open but in the evening it suddenly just goes really cold in the house, I guess the ceramic tiles on the floor and the high ceilings also makes it cold, I am so glad I bought slippers with me, so I don’t think it will be long before we have to have a fire in the evening, but we will be wearing shorts in the daytime which is crazy but I guess we will get used to it, one of the neighbors said he starts lighting his fire in the evenings in the middle of November but the day time temperatures are still hot, its all very weird. He was also telling me that all of his family got pneumonia within a few months of being in Cyprus, and he has heard of other people also getting it, he said it’s all to do with the weather as it never gets really cold enough to kill any of the germs, and with it being warm and humid that is the weather that germs seem to like, I thought that was quite interesting but let’s hope we can stay healthy.

I have been really surprised to find out that the only ibuprofen that they sell over here is something called Nurofen which contains ibuprofen but it costs a fair amount, and Paracetamol over here you can only buy in pills called Panadol and another name which I have forgotten, you also can’t buy either of them from a supermarket or a shop but it seems you have to go to a pharmacy and ask the pharmacist, which I also found really strange, so when I go back to England I will have to stock up on them, I have asked Brian the guy we met in Ryde if he will bring me some over when he gets here, I think he is due to arrive sometime in December., we have stayed in touch with him and have offered to pick him up from the airport to take him to an Airbnb that he has rented, I think it has been nice for him in a way hearing about all the blips that we have had so hopefully he won’t have so many, and also we seem to know where most things are now, we were lucky in meeting Linda and Graham our neighbors from the Airbnb who were really helpful to us so it’s nice now to be able to help someone else muddle through everything lol.

Today we finally got the car sorted out and finished with, Monday we did the MOT and the car insurance, the MOT was only thirty five euro’s which is about thirty pounds, it used to cost us around fifty pounds on the Isle of Wight and only lasted for a year, but over here it lasts for two years, and the car insurance was also cheaper, so that made us both happy, then Tuesday today we went out to get the car registered and got Cyprus plates for it, anyway it’s nice to finally have that completed.

We seem to have a problem with ants since moving in, every night they appear from somewhere and are all over the downstairs floors, mainly the kitchen and living room, last night we sprayed so much ant spray that I had to go and sit outside in the dark as I couldn’t breathe., hopefully at some point they will go if we keep spraying, but when we moved into the house there was a tin of ant spray in the cupboard so obviously it might be an ongoing problem, at the moment we can’t seem to figure out where they are coming from, but hopefully in time we will, I told Nick that tonight instead of spraying and killing them we need to follow them, so maybe that will work lol.