I'm pretty sure that the holiday reached its title of 'worst holiday ever' when we ran out of money three days from the end. Although running out of money often makes the holiday more memorable and more interesting and encourages cameraderie amongst you and fellow travellers, there was absoluetly no cameraderie and no fellow travellers. To use a euphemism, eastern europe is the NHS whereas Cyprus is American hospitals. Unless you pay, there is nothing to do,...

So my first travel experience by plane was arranged by my boyfriend, who was frustrated by the thought of sitting next to me on a non-airconditioned bus all the way to Algiers from London. Although at the time I didn't take this very well (why wouldn't he want to sit, enchanted by my glittering wit for 49 hours?), I knew that the time had come to get on a plane. My friends were living abroad, I was planning grad school in the US and I wanted to travel to Austra...

I suppose I wasn't being particulalry open minded when I agreed to go to Cyrpus. I'd read the bumph and bought the t-shirt that Ayia Napa was as trashy as it was possible to be. Add 40 degree heat, a few marital tensions and stress brought on by the flying, and a holiday in Skegness might have been a better option. We realised day one, that we didnthave enough money to survive in Ayia Napa for a week, unless we subsisted on a diet of McFlurrys and bottled wa...