TheFlyingDoctor

Alas, it was time all too soon for us to head back to the UK. I had no concerns about getting on the flight, as on Mondays Larnaca gets uprated to a 767 - although it's not entirely clear why, as I was forecasting almost a hundred empty seats. However, what I should have worried more about was getting to the aiport... since we had already drifted twenty minutes or so along the coast, and with plenty of time until check-in, I wondered how much further it would be to walk rather than backtracking to the bus station. Google claimed less than an hour, with a route past the salt lakes and the potential to detour to the Hala Sultan Tekke mosque if we made better progress.

Unfortunately, I had not checked what google had decided "Larnaca International Airport" meant! It's estimate was based on an endpoint in the middle of the runway - via a service road I seriously doubt my BA pass would entitle me to access - rather than something more useful like the terminal (located at aiport loop):



Unsurprisingly, we never made it as far as the service road- as google led us first to what may once have been Larnaca International Airport, but now seemed firmly abandoned, and more to the point was clearly not the building we'd arrived at. We pressed on anyway, until the winning combination of high gates and barbed wire confirmed our suspicion that this was not the correct path.



We therefore backtracked to the main road, hoping to find our way through the rental car facilities rather than having to follow the wide arc of the B4. Fences continued to be our nemesis, along with the lack of a rental car to return, but we could see the terminal so stuck to our chosen approach. A short distance from the building we encountered a car barrier that could easily be skirted on foot... except there seemed to be a flurry of activity from a nearby guard building, so we figured it best to go introduce ourselves as idiot tourists. Fortunately their activity had more to do with break schedules than our presence, and they reassured us that we could, technically, get to departures this way: we'd just managed to get onto the access road for the staff canteen! From there, an obscure staircase lead up to precisely the taxi area we'd got stuck at the previous day when searching for the bus stop. Playing it as cool as we could for two sunburnt Brits finishing a five mile hike, we sauntered past the drivers and in to the air conditioned relief of the terminal.

Despite all that, we had plenty of time to check in as the flight had picked up delays of twenty minutes or so. We had to check in at a desk, which meant no seat selection, although thanks to the light load we'd been sat together anyway. Security was swift, so once we'd escaped the duty free hall we were able to check out the Swissport lounge. This turned out to be a bizarrely shaped maze with fishtanks built into the mid-height walls, but we located light snacks, drinks, power sockets and comfortable seats to fill the extra time to boarding.

Scheduled departure was 19:35, but we weren't actually in the air until 8pm. Surprisingly for a shorthaul service, there was in-flight entertainment - albeit from overhead screens with a fixed programme of BBC news followed by La La Land. Apaprently many seats had no sound, which would make enjoying a musical particularly difficult, but with half the plane empty anyone affected was welcome to move. However, musicals confuse me, so Luke and I passed the time with conversation and a variety of app games. The return was swifter than the outbound, although I don't know if that's down to the larger aircraft, lighter load, or favourable weather conditions. Whatever the cause, four hours along we got the "fifteen minutes to landing" announcement from the flight deck.

That turned out to be accurate, and finding a gate was only another five minutes. Somehow we then went from jetbridge to bus ride in 16 minutes, thanks to the e-gates at immigration and being lucky enough to reach the bus stop just before departure of the penultimate service of the night. That got us home at 23:15, meaning door-to-door was under 42 hours, and adding one more fun fact to our adventure: it had an average speed of almost 100mph!



and there we have it! Rather shorter than my usual offerings, and quite different from the typical luxury jaunts that tend to grace these pages - but I hope it caught the interest of a few of you at least. If you'd like to see more photos, there's a higher resolution gallery over on my blog. Or if you'd like to check out any of my other, more conventional, reports, there's a link in my signature to the archive. Thanks for reading!