Our Greek Odyssey

but fortunately we’re having a little respite from the heat at the moment due to a thunderstorm last night which brought the temperature down considerably. It probably won’t last but for the moment I’m just revelling in the fact that I can sit down without sticking to my chair! We’ve been making do with fans dotted all around the house but we finally had to succumb to an air conditioning unit due to the fact that the temperature in the kitchen was pushing 93 degrees! That kind of heat really saps your energy and makes you reluctant to move or do anything really. Junior was also suffering from prickly heat which she hasn’t had before and so we bought a mobile unit to push around the house to wherever the need is greatest!
There has been a lot of talk recently in the Greek press about pushing tourism to help the country pull itself out of recession but I think they need to get that message across to the people who actually work in the service industry. Yesterday we went for a drive out for lunch – mainly because we’d borrowed a friends car which has air-con, unlike the rustbucket we drive! We ended up in Argalatsi further down the Pelion and headed to a central square where there were lots of taverna tables and chairs set out. There were a couple eating and other people having a drink so when the waitress came over we ordered drinks and asked for some food. She wrote down the drinks order but shook her head at the request for food even though she then asked the people at the next table if they were enjoying their meal. After delivering our drinks she collected her bag from inside the taverna and went off home – it appears she didn’t want to take our order because she was about to finish her shift! Needless to say we had the drinks and then headed back up the coast to Kala Nera where we’ve been before and which seems to understand that if you have a bar or restaurant you generally have to serve people We had a very pleasant meal in ‘Nirvana’ along the seafront and from the table junior could just jump down and splash about in the sea.

No-one can sit back and expect people to come to their country without providing something special. It is not enough to think that where you live is unique and that its natural beauty will entice people regardless of prices, difficulty of getting there, threat of strikes or shoddy service. Most people work hard to save for their holidays and they cherish the one or two weeks’ they get away from their normal life. Where are they going to go? To a country where they might find their flight disrupted, the ferries on strike and the welcome less than cordial? The surroundings just aren’t enough, the service has to be there as well. If Greece expects to pull itself out of the current financial crisis using the tourism sector if needs to get it’s act together first.

Thought it was time for a name change although Sean could probably still write a blog under “Living in Skopelos” as he seems to spend more time there than he ever did when we had a home there!
Junior and I have been back once and that was for Sean’s birthday in June, we didn’t get to Meteora because a friend was over visiting Skopelos from South Africa, so we had a very enjoyable evening in Englezos restaurant with a table full of people celebrating Sean’s birthday and also the birthday of one of the reps from the local travel office.
Being back in Skopelos didn’t feel strange at all, just familiar. I can’t say I’ve missed it at all and going back didn’t make me regret leaving or make me wish to return. It’s a lovely place and really good for short holidays but living there on a long term basis is not for me and I really think you have to be a certain type of person, or at a certain point in your life for Skopelos to be the ideal place to live.
Whilst Sean was home last week he took Junior to the local beach just down the road. We left it until after 6pm in the hope that the sun wouldn’t be as hot and there wouldn’t be as many people. Well we were right on one count! I suppose the presence of a couple of beach bars and a taverna mean that there will always be more people there than on an unserviced beach. Quite surprisingly the sea was quite rough, although the windsurfers didn’t seem to mind.

Both Junior and Sean braved the waves but for more of a quick dip than a lengthy swim!
We’ve also been to Athens lately, ostensibly for Sean to visit a client, but actually for a family day out and visit to the museum. Junior has a thing about museums (I think it’s something to do with the wide open spaces) and she has been eager to visit the one at the Acropolis for quite a while. After persuading her to hold on until after lunch, we finally went, and found even the outside impressive.

It really was worth a visit and the view from the cafe upstairs was extremely impressive too.

Junior is sulking in the picture because I wouldn’t let her use the camera to take a picture herself. This wasn’t just cruelty on my behalf, there was an extremely good reason behind my meanness! At Sean’s birthday meal, junior had borrowed the camera to take a few pictures of people around the table, unfortunately she didn’t put the wrist strap on and dropped the camera on the floor………lens first………..and now it won’t focus, retract its lens or take any pictures! So, she certainly wasn’t getting her sticky little mitts on the new camera!

As you can see I haven’t yet got around to renaming or revamping the blog but that’s because we’re still waiting for OTE to connect us. We naively thought that contacting them a few weeks before we were due to move in would mean that the phone line and internet would be ready and waiting for us once we arrived. Oh you trusting fool. We are still waiting although we were apparently issued with a telephone number 3 weeks’ ago! Not much use having a number and no working phone. So I’m still using the mobile internet stick although it does seem to be behaving a bit better at the moment.
So what is life like on the mainland? Well we’ve not really seen much of it at the moment although we have seen rather a lot of the inside of Ikea! What with buying beds and bookshelves we hardly seem to be out of the place. Junior loves Ikea especially since we bought her bed from there as well as a desk and pink swivel chair for her to use for her homework. She has the biggest room in the house but still manages to fill it with all her belongings – hence the trips to Ikea for storage solutions.
Of course now that we’ve moved over here Sean is in…………..Skopelos. Of the 24 days we’ve been here, Sean has spent nearly half of them in Skopelos. It seems that the minute we left, the whole of Skopelos decided that they needed him! Typical. He says that things will improve once the summer is over but I’m rather hoping he’ll be spending some of the summer with us so we can maybe have a holiday. We all fancy the idea of driving through Europe but obviously Junior and I have got to get Sean to commit to a date.
Junior started school a few days’ after we arrived here and likes the fact that she can walk to and from school again as we used to and also that the school is painted peach! She breaks up for summer on Tuesday morning and if it continues getting hotter we’ll probably be spending most of our time inside in front of a fan. It was 38 degrees today and is set to rise to 40 by the beginning of the week. I’m still not keen on the hot weather although I am obviously more used to it than I was when we first arrived 2 years’ ago. Then I’d probably wilt when it hit the high 20s, now I can walk to get junior for school when it’s mid 30s and not feel too bad. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been doing more walking, to and from school, taking the dogs for a wander. The dogs have been quite surprised – and not pleasantly – by the number of other dogs around. Everyone seems to have 1 or 2 dogs and they all seem to like to bark around 5am. It can get quite noisy although I find that listening to my i-pod when I go to bed finally lulls me to sleep. Another thing the dogs have found surprising are the wild tortoises we have found wandering around. Junior also finds them quite fascinating but, unlike the dogs, she doesn’t feel the need to sniff and butt them with her nose!
It’s Sean’s birthday next weekend and while he fancies a weekend in Cork (!) we’ll probably head for Meteora instead, so hopefully I’ll post some pictures on the next post (he mislaid the camera for a while so that’s why you’re being deprived of tortoise shots!).

and all is well but the internet connection is so slow I can barely check my email. Good old OTE have yet to get around to connecting us – 5 weeks and counting. Hopefully will be back up and running soon and then will fill in all the details about life on the mainland.

We were in Volos the other week, only for just over a day, and we would normally have stayed at the Hotel Aegli but we seemed to have arrived at the same time as a coach party so instead we carried on down the front and came to the Hotel Kypseli. Very nice it was too even if the air conditioning was a tad underwhelming. The heat led Sean to leave the window open all night allowing a particularly vicious mosquito to gain entry and wreak havoc on Junior and myself. Unfortunately I’m allergic to mozzie bites and so my arm looked like I’d had a couple of golf balls implanted under my skin but this was nothing compared to poor Junior who was bitten 5 times on one side of her face and 3 times on her ear. Poor little mite – I hate mozzies On the plus side the room did have a bath……..bliss. I’ve not had a bath for well over a year (don’t worry, I have been showering), and so lying in a proper sized bath was just wonderful. I couldn’t get junior out of it until she resembled a prune, she was too busy being a mermaid! The view from the room was also pretty good.

The reason we were in Volos was because we have finally found somewhere to live and we’re moving to the mainland in the next couple of weeks! Oh joy of joys, at long last the search is over. I realise I am now going to have to rename the blog, either to ‘Moving from Skopelos’ or ‘Pottering on the Pelion’, I’m sure I’ll be inspired shortly (any suggestions welcome but keep it clean!).
In a very strange twist, and one which makes me think that all things are pre-destined, we are actually moving to an area which Sean and I drove through when we first visited Greece in 2000 and which we commented at the time was a place we wouldn’t mind living in! So there you go, Greece, in spite of all the recently well publicised difficulties, is still the place for us, it’s just Skopelos that doesn’t suit. As the saying goes “it’s alright for a holiday but I couldn’t live there!” We are, apparently, not island people. I like to explore a country, visit different places, see new sites and when you live on an island you’re restricted in both terms of time and money. Time because you have to travel according to the boat timetable and money because getting back and forth to the mainland for 3 people is a not insignificant cost. Put all these factors together with the problems we have had finding somewhere to settle and I’m sure you’ll understand our decision.
Not a great time maybe to add to the menagerie but Sean couldn’t resist this little one as we both wanted a female tabby. As we now have cats in every colour, perhaps it’s time to stop?