This years summer vacation was in Electra Village in Cyprus and was Holly's first aeroplane trip and first holiday abroad at the tender age of just 8 months older (beating Joshua who travelled abroad when he was 9 months old). Unfortunately we are bound to school holiday's now and subsequently end up paying the extortionate prices as a result of supply and demand. I have to say I was very worried about travelling abroad with 3 children for the first time and with Holly being so young. My initial thoughts were that we should stay in the UK for this year, but it was lovely to get away from Wickford/Essex and all of the kids seemed to thoroughly enjoy their holiday.
As with previous years we were "all inclusive" which makes meal times much more accommodating for the children and gives them the opportunity to try lots of new foods. The boys also seemed to enjoy being able to order unlimited drinks and icecreams and could often be found sitting at one of the pool bars. We was slightly concerned about Holly's eating and whether we would be able to find any food suitable for her given that she hasn't long been on solids. However she was an absolute dream and was trying lots and lots of new foods. For breakfast she was enjoying scrambled eggs with beans, sausage and potato. After most meals she was enjoying a nice bowl of ice cream and some banana.
So over the next few weeks I will try and recall as much as I can from our 2 weeks in Cyprus starting with Day 0 today. The journey started well and Uncle Paul kindly drove us to Gatwick North terminal with the Galaxy absolutely rammed to the roof with cases, trunkies and hand luggage. All the extra luggage we required for Holly was ridiculous given that she was only allowed 10kg's in her bag! Once at the airport we bought a few snacks for the plane and then grabbed some lunch as there was no food served on the flight. After a spot of food we found a soft play area to pass the time until boarding commenced.
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| Holly playing happily in the soft play area as we wait to board our plane. |
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| Little B keeping his sister entertained. |
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| Such a happy little girl. |
One perk of having 3 kids and a buggy to get on board is that you pretty much get priority boarding and as such we were one of the first to board the plane.
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| The Thomson Boeing plane ready for Holly's first ever flight abroad. |
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| Me taking Holly aboard her first ever aeroplane. |
Holly wasn't quite as excited as Joshua and Brandon about the flight and the holiday experience and pretty much slept the whole way there (much to the satisfaction of surrounding passengers!).
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| Holly fast asleep in Mummy's arms. |
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| ....and still asleep but wrapped up in a warmer fleece. |
So the transport to the airport and the flight all went very smoothly with us arriving in Cyprus about 9pm local time. We quickly made our way through passport control and then onto baggage reclaim where we had a major hiccup. After waiting maybe 30 minutes or so watching case after case slowly get collected from the conveyor it became apparent that 1 of our 4 cases had gone missing and unfortunately it was Joshua and Brandon's! This is every passengers worst fear and over the years we have been fortunate enough to never have a bag go missing. As it happened there was one case left on the conveyor which looked almost identical to ours but had a tag with the name "Mitchell" on it. So clearly someone had not looked at the tag and had just picked up our case by mistake. So we had a bit of waiting around in the airport whilst I filled in some lost luggage forms and the Thomson reps tried making some calls to track our missing luggage. This really wasn't the ideal start to our holiday and with three very tired kids in a very hot and clammy airport our patience was being tested. I think we eventually got to our hotel at about midnight where I sank a very quick beer before heading to our room. Poor Josh and Brandon were almost in tears at there lost luggage and very concerned about what they were going to wear and if they were going to be able to go into the pool or the waterparks. We eventually settled into our room and got everyone asleep only to be woken at about 2:30am with the holiday rep knocking on the door with our missing luggage.
All's well that ends well. We all got to sleep and the boys were very pleased to see their case when they woke in the morning. We were ready to start enjoying our holiday.
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