Cyprus – The Perfect Family Holiday

It started off as a debate, where shall we go on our first family holiday abroad?  Europe was the most obvious choice given its close proximity to the UK, but where?  We ranged from Spain to Italy and then decided upon Cyprus.  Coincidentally I had a friend who had emigrated to their due to her husband being in the RAF and we also had friends who would be in Cyprus at the same time.

Cyprus is about a 4 hr flight from the UK, a nice short time to manage a toddler and a baby 🙂

We always search the internet for the best flight / holiday deals and ended up searching with First Choice.   At the time they easily had the best deals for the time we wanted to go.

Arriving into Larnaca, we grabbed a taxi and headed to our hotel which was just outside of Ayia Napa.  At the time I was worried that being the big party town it’s renowned to be, would it be family friendly enough?

I couldn’t have been more wrong, yes aside from the numerous pubs and clubs dotted around the main street, there was many family restaurants, each with their own well stocked playgrounds…and to be honest, most party goers aren’t around when the families are out as they’re most likely sleeping off the night before somewhere!

The beaches in Cyprus are great too, pure white sand and calm seas for the kids to paddle, what more could you ask for?

For a few days we hired a car to drive round some of the Island, try and get a feel for the real Cyprus, on our trip we headed to Limassol as that’s where my friend lived and also we went East along the coast line towards Protarus and to the ‘ghost town’ of Famagusta.

In hindsight we should have travelled west towards Paphos but I think at the time we didn’t want to spend too long a time travelling from place to place with two kids.

Paphos is an Archeologists dream, with Ampitheatres, medieval castles and Aphrodites Rock.

And the Troodos Mountains obviously would have made for a great trip….I can already see a trip in the near future to go back and do the things I didn’t do the first time!!

Monica from The Travel Hack has written a great post on 8 things to do in Cyprus, she highlights some of the areas already mentioned.

Have you been to Cyprus?