May 17th - An Early Birthday for Mum...

Tomorrow is my Mum's birthday but as you know John and I will be at Elaine and Paul's wedding and Mum, Dad, Jane and John will be taking advantage of a 'Daily Deal' and going to stay at the Ambelikos Traditional Hotel http://www.ambelikos.com/ which is somewhere North of Limassol.

So today we had arranged to go to lunch at Oniros for an early celebration.  John shot off down to Akourdalia at the crack of sparrows this morning to help with putting up gazebos and on his return he was pulling what bit of hair he has out as the weather was making it difficult to erect them and they were broken and had bits missing.  He had done three hours worth and was more than ready for his lunch by the time he came back.

We had arranged to meet at 12.00 am to ensure that we had a table - not realising that they don't now start taking food orders until 12.30pm but having said that by about 12.45pm nearly every table was taken.

Jane and John arrived last Saturday and this was our first opportunity to see them.  They are coming up to stay with us next week when they get back from their weekend away.  Jane was saying that, as an avid reader of the blog, she didn't like it being so far behind and I agreed with her - it is only really because of the week we were without internet - so I promised to do some double posts to catch up a bit.

The location is still stunning and we were rewarded with lovely warm sunshine.

The menu has changed a bit - one or two of our favourites have been replaced by new offerings which will probably become favourites in time and John was delighted that the garlic bread with dip was still available.

John, Jane and Dad shared a large anti-pasti plate, Mum and John both had the slow roast pork belly ciabatta and I had a Lebanese lamb wrap thing that was delicious - even more so because I treated myself to a Crabbies Alcoholic Ginger Beer!

As I said the venue soon filled up and we saw Crafty Jane arrive with her Mum Margaret who is over for ten days.  They were lucky to find themselves a table but they did.  Jane had taken her mum down to the flower festival at St Paul's Pillar and they were having lunch before returning to Arodes.

We had a very nice lunch and it was good to get together.  We gave Mum her cards (thanks Sheila for your card) and her present so that she could have them first thing in the morning before they set off for Limassol and some shopping in the Mall before finding Ambelikos.

We returned home via Akourdalia and Lyn and Al's house to see if there was any more that we could do to help towards tomorrow's wedding.  There was only Al there sweeping up and he thought that everything was under control so we would not be needed so that was good news as we had pencilled in a lie-in and leisurely breakfast before getting ready for the wedding.

We had not expected a get together this evening with John and Susan and David and Denise but David and Denise had cancelled their trip to the North because the weather forecast had been poor.  John and Susan are going away themselves soon so we needed to catch up with them for instructions on their watering and alarm system so tonight was about the only opportunity we had.  As David and Denise live in Neo Chorio we decided to go down to Yiallos early for a bite to eat.  It blew up quite cool and windy and the clouds over the hills towards Lissos were very black indeed but we managed to avoid getting wet.  We three couples all moved out to Cyprus permanently in May 2011 and many years previously David and Denise had been staying at the Akamanthea Resort at the same time as Susan and John - Denise is also from Sheffield - small world!

It was my turn to have a drink and Denise and I decided to share a couple of carafe's of rose wine - it went down a bit too easily!!!  I shall pay for it tomorrow!