A 7-Day Adventure in Cyprus
Day 2 — Late for Breakfast
I had a vague recollection of agreeing to meet Tommy for breakfast at some time but exactly when eluded me. I eventually managed 9:30, half an hour before the polite yet strict Malaysian waitress closed shop for the morning. We both tried valiantly to produce the necessary saliva to masticate our food but I gave up and settled for gallons of fruit juice and chunks of feta cheese, easily demolished in quick swallows.
I glanced over to see our nighttime apparition manifest itself as a middle-aged woman fast approaching who, to my acute embarrassment, apologised for being rude to us. Her name is Romy, a Swiss living in Zurich and a regular to the Apollo — though never before seen by me on my many visits. Both Tommy and I apologised profusely and assured her it would not happen again and that we had intended no offence but were simply ignorant to the passage of time. I had thought to quip, asking that she might like to wear a little bell so we might hear her nocturnal approach and avoid myocardial infarction but such things tend to go wrong with images of Austrian cows conjured and resultant further explanations becoming increasingly more awkward.
We all agreed to meet up at the bar in the evening for 'aperitifs'. I'd never considered JD an aperitif but it sounded good.
Seated in the lounge area, Tommy and I both felt chocolates and flowers were the order of the day so while he went up to grab another shower I set off in search of a more scented, fattening apology, the sort you can eat between meals and ruin your appetite.
The Hotel Apollo Paphos sits back off the main road into Kato Paphos, a few minutes walk from a small beach and not far from the lighthouse and amphitheatre overlooking the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
It is one of the older hotels in Paphos, dating back perhaps 25 years and constructed, some say, from archaeological stone flotsam crafted by stonemasons way back across the millennia in 4 century BC. Others say that's bull and it was built of local stone from quarries just down the road near the Tombs of the Kings that, incidentally, were built around the same time. Now, if I was a developer and presented with the option of hewing fresh stone from a quarry or had a 10-ton truck to hand and the cover of darkness under which to operate ... besides it's the Island of Romance and deserves a little latitude.
But that latitude is crumbling, along with the frontage and balcony railings and the required CYŁ200,000 facelift will generate far less revenue that the land on which it stands, which is why it is closing for good at the end of October and another piece of Cypriot architecture will be eradicated as the pace of development accelerates across the island.
