Today was a really boring day to journal, so I’ll keep it boringly short.

It was the second day of work after the trip to Cyprus, and I’m really not used to the early hours yet, so I was tired nearly all day.

After I got home, I managed to watch one episode of Good Omens while eating dinner, and then I had to go to bed.

See. Boring.

I’ll start with what is essentially the prequel to what should be my journal entry today.

Technically, today started on a plane. It was only 0:45 when our flight from Larnaca, Cyprus, landed in Stanstead.

We then took what I always find as being a strangely long duration of time, to simply get up, grab hand luggage, and make it off the plane. Then there’s the maze around the airport, leading up to passport control. Where usually only around 25% of the electronic passport machines are operating, which are then removed of their efficiency by having two or three people members of staff getting in the way. We British know what a queue is, we understand that a green arrow on a newly empty passport gate means it’s ready for the next person, and we also would all like to talk to other people a bit less.

Of course, that isn’t quite the end of the journey through the airport. As you then have to collect your luggage that has been kept in the plane’s hold. I’ve always found airports in mainland Europe to be a bit more efficient than English ones, in that by the time you make it to the looping conveyer belt of luggage, your bags are already there, waiting for you. What happens here, is you have to first make it rhgough the crowd that has already gathered for their bags from another flight (there’s never just one flight on one conveyer belt), find a good spot to be able to quickly identify your luggage and lift it off, and then simply wait until it comes along. Sometimes it involves you picking up another bag that is similar to your own, or you don’t recognise your own bag and just let it loop a few times before realising.

After this step you are basically free to leave.

We did have to get on a free shuttle-bus to one of the airports long-stay carparks, but luckily this required minimal waiting, and was pretty fast. Then my girlfriend drove us home, which took us about an hour, but luckily she let me get a bit of sleep.

Once we were home, we greeted our cat, and went straight to bed.

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Who would have though all of this so far would have been about the first 12.5% of the day.? Anyway, back to the regular scheduled content…

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I woke around 6:30. Not quite enough sleep for a full day back at work, but honestly not much less than I would usually get. I had a shower, got ready, and left for work. The commute went pretty well, which was probably helped by the good weather and lack of congestion on the trains.

However, being back at work was a bit of a weird experience. As we have quite an open floor, and there tends to be a lot of fun discussions going on, people chatting, and just a nice (for me) level of background noise. There had been a few desk moves while I was away, and this led to people just not talking at all. It was near silence all day, and I was totally not ready for it. In the late afternoon it did liven up a tiny amount, but nowhere near normal.

After I’d finished work, and completed my commute home, I was greeted by my girlfriend before she imminently left for her night shift. So I ate dinner, and then went for a coffee with a friend.

I spent the evening mainly sat in my office with my cat, learning about SwiftUI. With all of the travelling I’ve been doing, I had only watched the Keynote and SOTU from WWDC so far, so I was glad to spend some time to finally introduce myself. From what I can tell early on, it looks like it will be really fun and beneficial to work on, but I’ve still got a while to go before I can say I fully understand it and have it replace my UIKit code.

It’s our last day in Cyprus, and it’s certainly been a lazy one!

We sat by the pool for the whole day, stopping only for lunch, and drinks at the bar.

Our transfer back to the airport was at 6 pm, and it we only arrived at the airport just after 7 pm. Once we got there, we had around three hours until our flight departed for England. We filled that time with wandering around the airport and eating dinner.

That’s as glamorous as it got for the entire day. Because as soon as we got on the flight, myself and my girlfriend both watched a movie on our iPads using the pretty cool in-flight entertainment app (I watched Johnny English 2), and then tried to sleep for the rest of it!

It’s our last full day in Cyprus today, as we’re leaving the hotel at 6 pm tomorrow! So we started it the only way we knew how. We woke up early, went to the restaurant for breakfast, went back to the room to apply suncream, and pack our bags for the day.

Our activities today were a bit more adventuring around the Famagusta region.

First of all, we got a bus to the Cape Greco National Park. From there we had about a 30 minute walk in the blazing sun towards the “Sea Caves”. It’s an incredible place, with some very nice views.

We were there until about 3 pm, and after that we hopped on the bus again, and went a bit further out to Konnos Bay. It’s another beach, which is slightly more enclosed than others, so the water’s much more calm.

I was actually intending on getting in the sea for once when I got there, but we were quickly greeted with tons of jellyfish in the water. I’m sure we would have been fine, but everyone in the water was clearly being stung constantly. So we settled with relaxing on the beach.

Eventually we became hungry, so we got the bus back to the room, and immediately showered all the dust from the caves, and sand from the beach off. That pretty much lead us straight into dinner, as there was not much time left.

Just after dinner, there was a mini Parrot show in the hotel. It ‘s clearly more for the kids, but we say a few birds ring some bells, dunk a mini basketball, and the standard things. Nothing major, but it’s more a chance to make money by selling photos with the birds.

Anyway, it’s time for a drink at the bar. And after that hopefully I can get another episode of Good Omens downloaded.

We were a bit more adventurous than usual today. We went to the WaterWorld waterpark, which is apparently the number #1 themed waterpark in Europe. It was good, but I wouldn’t exactly go that far.

Lucky for us, the waterpark is really close to our hotel. So we had breakfast quite late, in a restaurant just down the road from the hotel. I had an English breakfast, so much more enjoyable than the hotel food. Once we were finished, we jumped on the bus to the park, which only took around 5 minutes, and cost just €1.50 each.

I think we arrived at the park about 12 pm, and after just over 3 hours, we’d been on every ride, and were pretty much to go. We stopped at the restaurant for some food, got dried and changed clothes, and then wandered around the park taking a few photos.

After we’d completely finished, we got the bus back to the hotel, where we’ve been ever since. I had a nap, we had dinner, and for a few hours we’ve been at the bar playing DS games.

I didn’t exactly have a morning today, as I slept in for an extra few hours while my girlfriend went to have breakfast. It wasn’t a big deal though, as today was going to be a relaxing day by the pool anyway.

After a few hours at the pool, we had lunch, then got ready and headed to a nearby beach. We arrived, sat down, and maybe after 5 minutes of being there, the heavens opened. Grey clouds appeared, rain started coming down, and we could hear thunder. This lasted for long enough that we just gave up on the idea of the beach and went back to the hotel.

In the evening we did the usual routine, except now we’ve finished the 11th series of The Big Bang Theory, so we’re going to have to start something else!

For once, we had an early start this morning. So we put on suncream as soon as we woke, headed for breakfast, and then got walking to Ayia Napa!

This was because we were going on a boat trip! We visited some nearby caves, where my girlfriend was jumping off the boat, and swimming around. The boat also had a lower level, which was full of windows, so you could see the fish swimming around the boat.

My experience of the boat trip honestly could have been better. But that was solely because I had got a tiny bit of suncream in one of my eyes, so it was constantly watering.

Once we were back on land, we walked through a different part of Ayia Napa, and found a Scottish bar that we’d seen advertised everywhere. When we arrived, it was closed, but that’s because we arrived about 5 minutes before it opened. Once the barman arrived, we had a few drinks, and I enjoyed all the decorations. They seemed to have a shirt from every men’s football team in the top 2 Scottish divisions.

After a while we were a bit hungry. But instead of eating at the bar, where I’m not even sure they did much food, We walked back 5 minutes or so to a Flintstones themed restaurant we saw on the way. The only difference it made to my meal, was that my burger bun was pink. It didn’t affect the taste, and was pretty confusing. I wasn’t aware that the Flintstones liked pink burger buns.

On the way back to the room, we kept enquiring at different places about car rentals, and the price of trips to a waterpark. It turns out the car rentals are pretty expensive, with the absolute cheapest car being around €50 a day. We did find online that was €22 per day, but with a €250 deposit. And someone in a local shop warned us that some local companies attract you with a low price, but find some way to keep the deposit. So we still aren’t sure about that.

I probably don’t need to repeat this, but in the evening we did the usual trio of dinner, drinks, and Big Bang Theory.

We started the day with the all-inclusive breakfast, which isn’t actually that extravagant. But it’s better than nothing.

As usual, after eating, we went back to the room to apply the endless amount of suncream needed for Cyprus, and headed out.

We went to the main Ayia Napa strip, where we visited quite a few random shops. And just because it was there, we had lunch at KFC! Strangely, there was one corner with a KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut, and a Costa, all seemed pretty familiar to me.

On the way back to the hotel, we walked back via the beach so my girlfriend could have a swim in the sea. I have no intention ever of swimming in the sea, but I’m happy sitting nearby reading or taking photos.

Turns out we also walked back a slightly wrong direction which took us about 15 minutes longer, but we saw some wild kittens which were very playful. So it worked out.

After we were back, we got sorted for dinner, and headed back to the restaurant.

In the evening we sat in the hotels bar outside so we could play DS together. My girlfriend has a “X number of games in one” game, so we played a few card games.

When we were bored with that, we continued tradition by watching a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory and went to bed.

We started the day by waking up a bit later than we expected, so we only just made the all-inclusive breakfast.

Then we basically laid around the pool for the rest of the day. With Mexican tortillas for lunch in between.

After we had a bit more sun, and had a shower, we went back to the restaurant for dinner. Once we’d filled ourselves with ice cream, we explored a tiny bit of the local beach at night. Which wasn’t particularly interesting, as you couldn’t see anything.

We walked back to the room, and it was pretty close to bed time. So we watched a far few episodes of the Big Bang Theory and went to sleep.

After last night, we were all ready for our trip to Cyprus today.

We woke up, had a coffee/tea, said goodbye to the cat, and headed to Stanstead airport. The airport was rather busy, but it all seemed to flow pretty well, so we didn’t notice any real delays.

However, once we boarded the plane, we were hit with an estimated 50 minute delay from air traffic control. This was just after the plane was ready to leave.

It turned out pretty well though. As all the kids took turns to visit the pilots in the cockpit, and after they had their turn, my girlfriend wanted to see what it was like. So we had a turn.

Fortunately for us, as we went in, the pilots were notified we needed to move around the airport so we could be ready for any early slot. So we sat down in the cockpit! They shut the cabin door, and we got our own tour of the cockpit from the pilot, where I asked them quite a lot about the iPad they were using. I don’t want to write everything I wrote on Twitter here, so if you want to check out what it was like, go to my Twitter.

Once arrived in Larnaca airport, we found our transfer company, and headed to the hotel. And that is pretty much where the day ended. As we had a drink from the bar when we arrived, unpacked in the room, and went to sleep.