Cyprus Holiday Day 4 - Sandy Bay Sand Castles

Day 4 of our holiday and we took a 15 minute walk from out hotel to the picturesque and very beautiful Sandy Bay Beach. You can tell Joshua takes after me as en-route he opted to take the more challenging rocky path rather than the sand path, end result was him falling over and grazing his knees! 

 

The highest point between out hotel and Sandy Bay - a great look out point with stunning views.

Sandy Bay could easily feature on the cover of postcards with its lovely sandy beach and crystal clear waters. As soon as we arrived there Joshua jumped straight into the water to clean his knees up, Brandon started digging in the sand and Holly went to sleep! 

The absolutely stunning beach at Sandy Bay.

Joshua and Brandon enjoying cooling off in the crystal clear waters.

Because the beach is in a bay there is minimal tidal movement making it perfect for kids and for snorkeling.

Once Holly wok up she had a kick around in the sea using her floatie ring.



Brandon playing with his little sister.

Then Joshua takes Holly for a little spin in the water.

Our three beautiful water babies!

No is not a seen from Baywatch. Its just my little Holly playing in the sea.

Sitting Holly in the shallow water on the sand proved a mistake. At first she was very curious to just splash in the warm waters. But then she discovered the texture of the sand between her fingers and as we all know, what ever goes in a babies hands goes in their mouth. Needless to say she tried eating a few handfuls of sand!! Subsequently I had to take her into the sea and then dunk her in the salty sea water to try and wash her face and mouth out. 

Holly getting ready to eat a few handfuls of yummy sand.

A nice perspective of Holly looking on at her brother playing in the sea.

As with all of our beach holidays I try my best to be a bit creative with the boys in making some interesting sand castles.  This holiday was no different as we made a Vulcan Bomber, a train and a turtle. The boys enjoyed destroying the plane and train as soon as it was complete. But we decided to leave the turtle standing to sea how many people walking along the beach would stop and look at it.

Mine and Brandon's Vulcan Bomber sand castle.

Then we made a train.

Finally our rather giant sea turtle sand castle.

To give you an idea of the size of the turtle here is a picture of Holly sitting on the turtle shell.

On the way back to the hotel we noticed that the beach had a rather large inflatable slushie dog promoting some refreshing slushies. Needless to say we ended up buying both the boys a slushie to keep them refreshed on the walk back to Electra Village.

Can you see Joshua and Brandon at the bottom of the giant inflatable Slushie dog?

Joshua and Brandon showing off their multi coloured slushies.

Whilst walking to Sandy Bay we also spotted a few lizards on the rocks. I was explaining to the boys that they are cold blooded animals and that they lay out in the rocks during the day to warm their blood. Lizards aside though, Cyprus seems more renowned for its stray cats and the hotel seemed to have a family of about 6 or 7 regulars which you could always find somewhere around the resort. The boys both became particularly attached to a little black kitten and wanted to keep bringing it back to our apartment. 

Joshua with their adopted black kitten pet.

And then Brandon - not sure that's a recommended way to hold a kitten!

At lunchtime Holly ate some baked beans for the first time ever and absolutely loved them. Any guesses what we did after lunch? Yes you got it, the boys wanted to go back to the water park. Today was a little different though as some kind woman who was leaving the next day gave the boys an adult size lilo. So instead of running riot on all of the water slides, the boys spent most of the time playing in the wave pool on the lilo with their friend James.

Brandon having fun on the lilo.

Both boys trying to balance on the lilo at the same time.

I think someone is going overboard.

Man overboard.

Make that two men overboard.

We were very mindful of the strength of the sun in Cyprus and the kids were all having at least 2 coats of factor 50 sun cream a day. Because of Brandon's skin colour we could effectively leave him out in the sun uncovered all day long and he never showed the slightest sign of going red or burning. Joshua is a different kettle of fish and generally we would only let him have half a day with his shirt off before making him out on his aqua shirt. Today we was very proud of him as he was playing in the water park and came running up to us saying he was starting to feel sun burnt and could he please have his t-shirt on.

 

The evening entertainment was a karaoke night and we were really hoping Brandon would go on stage on sing his Freddie Mercury - We Will Rock You. But I couldn't convince him, so instead we sat there doing Britain's Got Talent buzzer sounds for whether we liked the singer/song or not.