Too wet this morning for walking but we've arranged with Maggi to go to check on a couple of alternate apartment hotels for next year, prudently keeping our options open as management here consider the potential value of this year's "improvements", as well, no doubt, as factoring in the escalating cost of electricity and water.
Larco Hotel Apartments is fully booked - at least the apartments are - which is not particularly good re prices. One bedroom flats in winter are €660 a month, mostly occupied by Scandinavians. We're about to leave when the thunderstorm intensifies and there is tremendously heavy rain, which suddenly turns to hail. Quite dramatic as it piles up in front of the glass doors and the street becomes a stream.
We're driving back slowly, so as not to lose the brakes or skid into the intersections. Stop at another hotel - the Onisillous - to check it out. the flats are OK - a little less cosy than the Sunflower but with BBC TV and microwaves. The location has pros and cons - quite near St Lazarus and the beach and nearer the Saturday market, but not as close to the supermarkets or Prinos. The owner is a real charmer though. He's close to eighty and the hotel is a family business. He and his wife live on the premises and his granddaughter has a beauty shop here. But life wasn't always so easy. He invites us to share a cup of Cyprus coffee and Mandarin oranges from his own property, and tells us the story of his progress from barrow to small shops to hotel, with a lovely, quiet, modest style. The flats are €555 a month from November to March and there is, as he shows us, a printed price list - a refreshing change from Mr Andreas' practice of tossing out prices to see what the response is - run it up the flag and see who salutes. So that even when one has a more or less satisfactory price from him there is always the nagging suspicion that someone else has probably done better, or, embarrassingly, worse, or that one may have just lost a game of chicken.
As we're in the lobby there are torrents of rain pouring down the road and lapping up over the sidewalks, with white hail being borne along on the current. Less rain and no hail by the time we get back home, but at one point driving in the car sounded like living inside a drum as it was being beaten.
Larco Hotel Apartments is fully booked - at least the apartments are - which is not particularly good re prices. One bedroom flats in winter are €660 a month, mostly occupied by Scandinavians. We're about to leave when the thunderstorm intensifies and there is tremendously heavy rain, which suddenly turns to hail. Quite dramatic as it piles up in front of the glass doors and the street becomes a stream.
We're driving back slowly, so as not to lose the brakes or skid into the intersections. Stop at another hotel - the Onisillous - to check it out. the flats are OK - a little less cosy than the Sunflower but with BBC TV and microwaves. The location has pros and cons - quite near St Lazarus and the beach and nearer the Saturday market, but not as close to the supermarkets or Prinos. The owner is a real charmer though. He's close to eighty and the hotel is a family business. He and his wife live on the premises and his granddaughter has a beauty shop here. But life wasn't always so easy. He invites us to share a cup of Cyprus coffee and Mandarin oranges from his own property, and tells us the story of his progress from barrow to small shops to hotel, with a lovely, quiet, modest style. The flats are €555 a month from November to March and there is, as he shows us, a printed price list - a refreshing change from Mr Andreas' practice of tossing out prices to see what the response is - run it up the flag and see who salutes. So that even when one has a more or less satisfactory price from him there is always the nagging suspicion that someone else has probably done better, or, embarrassingly, worse, or that one may have just lost a game of chicken.
As we're in the lobby there are torrents of rain pouring down the road and lapping up over the sidewalks, with white hail being borne along on the current. Less rain and no hail by the time we get back home, but at one point driving in the car sounded like living inside a drum as it was being beaten.
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