Ten things you didn’t know about family holidays in a pandemic
With Cyprus set to welcome vaccinated visitors, Claire Irvin has the inside track for anyone travelling there with children
With its borders opening on May 1, family favourite Cyprus could now be one of the first places we can visit. But beware. Travelling with kids in tow amid travel uncertainty has its moments…
1 YOU’LL NEED TO KEEP YOUR OPTIONS OPEN
As a travel journalist, there have been many experiences I’ve looked forward to sharing with my family. #MyFirstPandemic certainly wasn’t one of them. On the upside, we certainly travelled the globe together in planning last October’s half-term break – from our abandoned attempt to visit friends in the United States, to a lastminute cancellation to Sicily, when borders closed days before we were due to leave, to leaving a man overboard when work got in the way of Daddy’s long coveted annual leave (thanks, Covid). With Turkey and Crete also options, we’d had numerous holidays in our heads without even leaving the front room.
With the hours ticking even faster than my list of no-goes (Turkey got caught fixing its figures, Crete predicted 12C/53F and rain all week), Cyprus emerged as a front-runner. Even with a new amber listing, the island seemed to be doing a good job of managing its cases, and was testing on arrival, too (what joy, kids aged under 12 were exempt). Cyprus has been the scene of many personal firsts. First holiday without my parents. First (of many) girls’ trips. First work trip. First sunshine holiday with my now husband. Why not “first trip under restrictions”?
2 YOU’RE GOING TO NEED BACKUP
With my energy flagging, it was time to call in expert help from tour operator Sovereign Luxury Travel. With many firms now offering unprecedented booking flexibility (Sovereign, for example, has launched two initiatives in response to the pandemic – Travel with Confidence and Book with Confidence), their expert support comes into its own when baffling policy changes and tricksy administration mean you need to pivot your holiday plans. They addressed the “where” (three options for family luxury of the type I’d outlined), the “how” (nononsense instructions on timing and booking testing, and a simple checklist for required paperwork) and the “why” (making soothing noises to my “should we even be doing this?” niggles).
3 LEAVE THE LAB TESTS TO THE PROFESSIONALS With my eye on the new Amara hotel in Cyprus, we booked, well clear of last October’s Thursday-night quarantine lottery. All that remained was to arrange my Covid test, 72 hours ahead of departure. Depending on the time of your flight, this can be more complicated than it sounds. I flipflopped between lab test and home swab test before deciding it wasn’t important enough to leave home for, and anyway, surely I was grown-up enough to test myself. Choosing a brand that claimed only 1 per cent of tests came back inconclusive, I spent half a day in a tailspin of self-induced anxiety before FaceTiming a qualified friend to make sure I did it properly. A day later, the results came back inconclusive. I ended up spending a day in London and £500 on a six-hour test. The moral of this story, I think, is clear…
4 YOU’LL BE READY FOR A HOLIDAY AS NEVER BEFORE And as build-ups went, the fits and false starts were certainly setting me up for some serious R&R. I suffered cold sweats by night, palpitations by day. It would have been the ideal pre-holiday diet if I didn’t stresseat every salty snack in sight.
Once booked, I activated push notifications to Cyprus news sites, scoured websites for the latest micro-restrictions and interrogated every person I knew with the most obscure Cyprus connections I could find. One day, kids in swimming pools were reported to have been banned, then tourists were being made to wear face masks when sunbathing. Was it even going to be worth it? Calls to Sovereign and the hotel reassured me these were rumours, and the day before we were due to leave, it seemed Cyprus was playing ball. If only my daughter hadn’t. Played ball, that is. Rugby to be precise. As we sat in A&E listening to the doctor deliver her X-ray result, I was focused on one thing: “What kind of cast will it require, and does it come in waterproof?”
5 THERE ARE UPSIDES TO PANDEMIC TRAVEL Among them, an empty airport, no border control queues and an even emptier aeroplane. Sadly for my offspring, Mum’s Mask Enforcement policy meant they had to stay in their allocated seats for the entire journey.
6 IT WILL ALL FEEL LIKE THE FIRST TIME
Amara is just a 40-minute private transfer from the airport, and while it was unnerving to be in a car with a strange driver, masks and open windows adhered to Covid protocols and I soon relaxed. A stone’s throw from the busy cosmopolitan city of Limassol, this is not the prettiest stretch of coastline – its horizon currently a Covid cruise ship car park – but it is close to the ancient kingdom of Amathus, and as with much of Cyprus, it is swathed in mythology. (Happily, this also dovetailed with my eight-year-old’s school project.) The hotel’s sumptuous spa has been built around a section of Limassol’s ancient city wall, some of which has been left visible. Dozing on a lounger beneath it after a dreamy Rose Diamond Collagen Facial felt a world away from the trials and tribulations of leaving the UK in the first place.
Despite its ancient foundations, Amare is more Dubai-style luxury resort than hotel. Its indulgent design oozes glamour, with each of the 207 rooms offering a panoramic view of the Mediterranean. Its image-conscious guests do their bit to add to the dazzle, with enough outfit changes to keep even the most jaded people-watcher happy.
7 YOU’LL FIND NEW JOY IN OLD FAVOURITES
By some fluke, our holiday coincided with a heatwave, but in many ways, the week turned out to be one of the wettest holidays in my family’s history, with morning tides leaving the shallow, summer-warmed sea calm and inviting, inflatables allowed in parts of the pool in the afternoon and the occasional after-dark swim. The beach inspired stone collections and sandcastle building, activities not seen on holiday since both children were in single digits. Without Daddy there for aquabased rough and tumble, the kids invented games – and even I was encouraged to enter the fray.
8 YOU’LL REMEMBER WHY YOU GO AWAY
I thought we were all desperate for sun. And we were. But I had forgotten, during months of locked down countryside living, how people make memories as much as places. How much I’d missed the sound of other languages around me. The poolside people-watching (The 11am cocktails! The under-the-radar rows!). The personalities among the staff, from the wisdom of the restaurants manager, to Carlos, the exuberantly hilarious and exquisitely Italian maître d’ of Ristorante Locatelli, one of several eponymous restaurants run by Michelin-starred chefs that give the hotel a sleek international edge.
Never mind the amazing food, service and sense of occasion, Locatelli will be forever remembered as the place with the longest, bendiest breadsticks. And while Matsuhisa Limassol expanded the children’s approved Asian dishes by 600 per cent, it will live on as the place Mummy over-ordered to such an extent we had to send dishes back. Along with the beachside fish restaurant and breakfast buffet (gloves, screens and masks mandatory), the children loved it all, but nothing passed muster more than room service spag bol on the balcony…
9 IF IN DOUBT, JUST ADD STRAY CATS
Half an hour’s drive from the hotel, up in the Troodos mountains, lies archetypal Cypriot village Omodos, where we went exploring. After a midmorning tasting at Lindos Winery, we arrived in bustling Omodos. Tourist traps are high on my “avoid” list at the best of times, but factor in social distancing and mask-wearing in 30C (86F) heat and the appeal of its cobbled streets and traditional stone houses palled. We made quick work of the stalls selling handmade narrow-knit lacing and arkatena bread.
If only the same could be said of lunch. The mezze I ordered at a recommended taverna turned out to be less the “bit of a hummus dip and a pitta” I was promised and more a delicious seven-course extravaganza. My photos of the morning, however, tell another story entirely. Picture follows picture of delighted child with mangy stray cat, each given a name and assumed personality, to add to the feline family they’d already amassed around the hotel. Now when we talk of Omodos, it is these they rapturously remember, our morning’s exploration turned into holiday highlight in one swish of a cat’s tail.
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IT WILL ALL BE WORTH IT For all these reasons and more, every hoop you have to jump through to get away safely will be worth it. Honestly. It will!