Bright lights, fairly big city
Earlier this week, Junior and I joined Sean in Volos to sample a bit of city life, and bearing in mind that neither of us have left the Sporades for nearly two years’ you can imagine what a culture shock it was – well for me at least, 6 year olds are infinitely more adaptable.
After a lengthy ferry journey with the sounds of “are we there yet” ringing in our ears every 20 minutes’, we arrived in the buzzing metropolis of Volos. First of all, to Sean’s apartment to dump our bags and show junior her bed (very important). She approved of the bed, the doors and everything in general. I was amazed by the amount of noise going on around (you can tell I’ve never been a city girl). The downside to the apartment was that Sean appeared to have had his water disconnected so washing was done with the aid of bottles of mineral water – good job it’s so cheap really.
Now this may seem strange to some people but the first thing I wanted to do was have a soya latte at Starbucks. I used to have them every week in Blighty at Costa Coffee and I miss them. Junior wanted to join in so she had a warm soya milk in a little Starbucks mug whilst sitting in a comfy chair looking out over the streets of Volos. Aaahhh, they grow up so quickly. It was very strange watching lots of cars and people all dashing about on a Sunday evening – quite different to Skopelos. The noise was something else as well! Trying to get to sleep in Sean’s apartment with people still shouting and carrying on till past 1 in the morning was nigh on impossible. I’m used to total silence and I just can’t imagine what it must be like to live with that noise all that time. Perhaps you don’t hear it if it’s what you used to and maybe the silence I like is deafening to others. Junior had no problem sleeping and was away in the land of Nod as soon as her head hit the pillow. I asked her next morning if she didn’t find it difficult getting to sleep with all the noise but as she replied “what noise”, I guess it really wasn’t a problem.
Junior wanted to visit Volos so that she could look at toy shops, I wanted to look at clothes shops and Sean just wanted to do as little as possible. It’s easy to forget how different things are when you’re a child. When we lived in England, junior would be in a toy shop or large store every few weeks but since moving out here to Skopelos she never really gets to wander around a big shop and look at lots of different things. Her face when we took her into a toy shop was just a picture. She didn’t know where to look first and just couldn’t believe that she was surrounded by lots of different toys. Even though it’s only a couple of years’ since we lived in England, junior is slowly forgetting the every day things she used to do there, and so she doesn’t really remember the places she used to visit and the things she used to see. Hence why the traffic lights in Volos were so fascinating to her (we don’t have them in Skopelos). I think she would have stood there all day staring at the colours changing and the red man turning to green. I reminded her that she always used to press the button on the pedestrian crossings in England to make the traffic stop so we could cross but she couldn’t remember it at all. She was amazed though that she could make the traffic stop. In her slightly confused reasoning she now believes that everyone used to wait at the crossings until she came along to press the button and indeed probably thinks that they’re stood there now waiting for her to arrive!
Another trip to Starbucks and the purchase of an Ice Age book and character for junior, meant that the trip was deemed a success and junior and I headed off home on the Flying Cat. I’m not the best sailor and the heat on board the vessel made the journey not especially enjoyable, but as junior was feeling a bit queasy my ‘mummy powers’ kicked into gear and I managed to quell any sickness I was feeling in order to take her mind off things. So we ended up making finger puppets and telling stories until we got to Skiathos when the crew opened the doors at the front to let some air in and cool everything down.
Whilst we were in Volos we saw the sea plane run by Argo Airways. Sean can’t wait to have a fly on it but as it only goes to Skiathos at the moment he’ll just have to wait! He did take a few photos but as he hasn’t downloaded them off his phone I can’t post them here! I’ll put them on next time.
