Paphos People

Joined the long queue at the post office today at Anavargos as I have an item that must get back to the UK.

They are only accepting post within Cyprus or to Greece at the moment as the flights that normally carry the mail are cancelled.

Your only option is to use DHL (through the post office as it is way cheaper than ACS), but there is no guarantee that it will get there in anything like normal timescales, but they will do their best!

The Citizen's Service Centre in there is also open for most items.

There is a sign on the door saying no more than 2 people inside at any one time, but they were only allowing people in singly when I was there. There must have been at least 30 people queuing outside and it took me an hour and a half to get in!

Stay safe.

I had to go to the main Anavargos post office this morning to renew my driving licence, as the main Citizens Advice centre is closed (or at least wasn't letting anyone in and redirecting callers to the post office).

As there is no post to (or from) the UK and most other places, I would urge you not to go there, unless you really have to, and in any case not tomorrow (18th) as it will be closed for disinfection.

I was in the queue for an hour and forty minutes, with 20 people in front. There were the inevitable impatient Cypriots trying to queue jump and large numbers of migrants both in the queue and around it. In fact the majority of the queue were migrants and they have no respect for queuing so there was plenty of squabbling.

Only two people are allowed in at a time and there are only two counter staff on duty. I did however get my licence renewed :)

I passed Lidl on the way home and there was a large queue there also. It appears that they too are limiting the number of people in the store - though I did not linger to find out how many. Fortunately I did my weekly shop yesterday.

Things have moved on since mid morning when I was there then. Staff were complaining that there aren't even any cleaners in there at the moment.

When I went into Sunfresh bakery just up the road, you had to use hand sanitiser and put gloves on before they let you in to buy anything, which was quite reassuring.

For anyone needing to send anything important to the UK, here is a quick update on the package I sent from the post office with DHL on Tuesday. It managed to leave Paphos about 10 minutes after I handed it over (the guy was there to collect it as I was leaving) and since then it has been to Athens, Bratislava and Leipzig and, this morning, it reached East Midlands airport, so I am going to call that a result!

......and it has just been delivered!

The sign in the post office window says it will be open again tomorrow!