Holiday Blog Day 2

After a late night - Cyprus is two hours in advance of Uk time - we woke to see the sun rise over a truly magnificent vista. A range of mountains behind, a ruined castle to the side and the sea in the distance in front.

The villa itself was much bigger than I had imagined - the driveway leads up through a small garden of olive trees and round to the side where the pool is. The inside of the villa is on split levels with a large marble staircase winding upstairs along a curved section of wall with narrow windows giving the impression of being inside some sort of small fortress. The upstairs bedrooms are all decently sized and with air conditioning too - hurrah and huzzah!

There was enough bread, milk and cereal for a reasonable breakfast and later on that morning the car hire people turned up with a Ford Focus for us. I opted to pay for the damage waiver - wisely as it turned out because I managed to put a scratch down the side getting down the narrow and extremely rough track leading down into the village.

We followed the page and a half of written instructions to navigate the maze of twisty little roads all alike to find the blissfully cool Lemar supermarket. We stocked up with provisions and plenty of beer and wine and headed back.

In the afternoon the pool is shaded by an ancient and gnarled olive tree, so I alternated between dozing, dipping in the water to cool off and reading 'Mr Norrell and Jonathan Strange' - ideal holiday fare and apparently acceptable for Guardian readers unlike the fantasy books with triple breasted Amazonian women that sf nerds like me supposedly prefer to read.

Spaghetti bolognaise for tea, perfectly timed for the first of the power cuts that seem to be a fact of life here. Fortunatly the emergency lighting kicked in and the power came back on by the time we had finished eating so that we could watch the risible but enjoyable 'Day after Tomorrow' on the dvd player. Strange to be watching a film about a global ice age in temperatures that were still over 30 degrees at ten o'clock at night ...