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3 weeks ago we went out to Cyprus for a weeks holiday/signing/viewing trip. We bought in Phoenix and this was our first trip out to see the area. Phoenix: We had a good drive around Paralimni to see if we could find the building site and to get to know the area a bit better. Saw lots of interesting things but not Phoenix so we went down to AB developers office and got one of them to guide us to the site. For those of you who want to try find it, leave Paralimni heading towards Protaras on Giorki Papadopoulou (the easterly of the two main roads, it is also called Korai closer to town). Turn left at the Police station, then first right, the road then turns left and Phoenix is on the right (or something similar to that). Having looked at an internet map now I think it must be close to the junction of Giorki Papadopoulou and Christou Tsarta. The pictures (hopefully attached) tell the story, but basically, they have dug the hole and starting filling it from right to left (if you look at it from where the pool will be). The right has got to ground level, the left is just a hole in the dirt. Due to the limit of the number of pictures you can attach I have added the views as a different post. The view is good but I think the apartments on the left side will have their sea view be blocked out by the neighbouring block. The surrounding area is very sparsely populated with a fair bit of build going on. Still a lot of open land. Paralimni is a small busy town largely built around the main road which runs through it. I didn't spend much time in it but they did appear to have reasonable selection of shops. It is clearly a 'working' town rather than a tourist stop. Mortgage: Unfortunately, despite appointments being made and lots of notice time, Emporiki Bank did not have the mortgage documents available at the branch when we (my wife and I) went there to sign. To their credit they were friendly and helpful, opening current accounts and promising to bring the documents to our hotel for signing later in the week. True to his word he did bring us hundreds of documents 3 days later (triplicate of approx 10 different things). That was not the end of it. He then said the POAs needed to be certified and that Bambos would pick us up later that the day. Meeting Bambos (the developer) was good (he was not in the office when we went by). He took us up to a local official who stamped and signed what he needed to. We chatted about the development, the area, the market and the future and of course it was all good news. It was a good thing we left plenty of time for this else it could have been a really frustrating trip. General: There is a lot of building, advertising and selling in the area. There are a number of publications aimed a Brits looking for property and some a very thick with hundreds of properties per area. I thumbed through a few trying to judge where Phoenix would sit and it was impossible. There are just so many things which seem similar and vary in price from 40K to 100K without the agent giving enough detail to see why the large price variations. Bambos was positive and said his next project would 'be increased to 80K next year', so he is seeing growth. I asked Bambos about the IKEA and he seemed to think it was still a way off being ready. He did mention he would be able to source better furniture at the same prices and that we should not be too concerned with the IKEA - we will see. Regards Chris Clark