Ray Family Adventures: Cyprus!

We had a 3 day holiday for the Muslim celebration of Eid back in October. Like many of those holidays, the country just goes ahead and declares the entire week a holiday. Woo hoo! We decided to go to Cyprus for the week. We met our friends from Doha (who are still there!), the Connors. They have two boys, Jaydon who is about 6 months younger than Olivia and Tylor who is one day younger than Eliza. We rented a 4 bedroom villa for the week that was a short walk to the beach, with views of the Mediterranean. We all had such a great time. Lots of wine and dominoes for the adults, just like the trip we took with them and the Leedys over 6 years ago to Greece.

Miss hula hoop! She has been obsessed with hula hooping and Mike found one in the airport gift shop when we landed. She didn't waste anytime.

Our amazing villa! The kids really enjoyed being outside in weather that felt perfect, coming from the Middle East.

Dancing at the restaurant just up the hill from us.

The kids got to eat breakfast outside every morning.

Fun on the beach! The kids played for hours in the sand.

Digging a serious canal to the water

Mr. Cool in the shade, with a beer in public, gasp!

E enjoying some pomegranate seeds by the pool

One day we headed to the Paphos Zoo. It was interesting.

Giant turtle

About to watch the bird show. It was actually the best part of the zoo.

This restaurant is probably the coolest and most memorable restaurant we have ever been to. It was up on a cliff that you had to take dirt roads to get to. They had one thing on the menu: family style meal of grilled chicken and/or pork, homemade fries, and Greek salad. They had a house red or white wine and water. It was so picturesque; the entire outdoor patio was covered in grape vines. It was packed and we were lucky to get a table. We stayed for about 4 hours and took it all in. The food was wonderful and so was the wine ;-)

The view of the Mediterranean

Our lovely table

After about 3 hours of just sitting, the kids needed some technology

Just stunning!

pigtail girl!

We never wanted to leave!

After eating ad drinking for 4 hours the previous day, we got some cultural sites in. We went to the Paphos Archaeological Park. Great Roman ruins and mosaics.

My cutie checking out the mosaics.

"Purple Baby"

After all that culture, we found another amazing restaurant with a view. The food was incredible, as were the drinks! :-)

Back to the beach!

Ha! This makes me claustrophobic just looking at it!

Eliza came running towards us to tell us something and absolutely face planted in the sand. Totally hilarious!

After a day at the beach, the two littles were DONE!

Another amazing restaurant with an incredible view!

Great grassy area for the kids to play.

Our waiter told us that around 15 years ago, there was a storm and this ship ran aground. It is too expensive for the insurance company to move it, so there it stands. The kids loved it.

We went back another night we enjoyed it so much.

Olivia and Jayden got along really well and had a lot of fun together.

Sadly, the only picture we got of the four adults.

We had no idea before we rented the car that they drive on the right side of the car, a first for us. It is actually really difficult to retrain your brain for that.

We first thought that was the Rock of Aphrodite, it wasn't :-)

This was!

My big girl and me.

My little loves

We had read in the guide book that this olive oil park/factory was a great excursion with kids. After driving on crazy un-stripped roads and Google Maps sending us on a wild goose chase, we finally pull up. We are the only car in the parking lot, that should have been our first clue. The guy at the ticket window was hilarious. He was a total sour grapes guy. He told us the owners had left him there in charge, there wasn't much to see or do, the restaurant wasn't open, no one else there spoke English, the pony was too old for pony rides, and we could pay the entrance fee "if we wanted to". It was too funny. We decide "why not", since we came all that way. The kids had so much fun and it was later deemed the highlight of the trip for them.