Votsi and beyond

Had a couple of days walking the highways and byways to see what's changed on the island.  Unfortunately quite a lot!  They are extending the harbour front in the neighbouring village so there is currently a massive and rather unsightly dredger which seems to spend it's day hammering down the sea bed!  Apparently they were aiming to get it done by the start of the season....fat chance.  I can't imaging the Sunvil guests being happy with their idyllic setting being trashed for the summer.....

The weather was rather grey and cool for the first couple of days but has now warmed up considerably.  Sunday was a beach cleaning day where the local scout group, some locals and some expats all got together in groups to gather all the rubbish that the winter storms had brought in.  The day started fairly cool which we were all quite grateful for but it soon changed and we ended up boiling under a cloudless blue sky!

We've met quite a few of the people I got to know over the summer last year and various events are already being arranged.  The first BBQ of the season is a week on Sunday so I'll prepare my liver as Karen is hosting!

Karen and Kostas have gone away for a few days so have kindly lent us their car to explore further afield.  We had a fabulous day today exploring Gerakas (at the very top of the island), Kalamakia - a lovely little harbour village and Steni Vala where we had our first Calamari & Tzatziki of the summer... it's a hard life!


On the road to Gerakas

Kalamakia harbour

On paying the bill we were asked whether we could give a young lady a lift back to Patitiri.  We said of course and ended up meeting Nikki, the new vet for the island!  It turns out that she was in Steni Vala to release a young seal that had been being looked after at the sanctuary on the island. Typical, we missed the event by a couple of hours. Oh well, maybe next time.

April 2015 - Here we are again!

Having had such a great time last year on the island, I decided to do it all again this year with one major difference....Paul is here too for the whole summer!  He took voluntary redundancy from his company just before xmas and I resigned from my job in March.

The journey to Alonissos started at 13:30 from Chesterfield on the train to Manchester airport.  It went smoothly until Edale where we sat still for 1hr having got stuck behind a slow and then non moving freight train!  We had a lovely view of fields full of lambs and watched as 2 ducks managed to overtake us as they walked across 3 large fields before we started moving again!!  We eventually made it to the station and on to the hotel for the night before an early flight to Thessaloniki.  From there we caught the bus from the airport to the bus station intending to board the 15:30 bus to Volos.  In my best greek I asked for Thio eeseeteerio styn Volos parakalo (2 tickets to volos please), only to be told 'sorry, there are no buses to Volos during the day as the ring road is closed, the next bus is at 21:15 this evening (it was 2.45pm at this time).  So, we spent 6 hours in Thessaloniki bus station drinking ouzo and playing Yahtzee :) We eventually got to our hotel in Volos at midnight.  We'd been given a room with a large balcony and a fabulous sea view, which of course was totally wasted as it was rather dark by this time!  The morning dawned sunny and warm and we had a great breakfast at 7.30 am to get our ferry to Alonissos at 9am.  So, we checked out, went over to the port and discovered that the ferry was now leaving at 10:45.....on arrival to Alonissos we trooped up to our apartment to find the owners were out and there was no key in the door!  Thankfully 10 mins later they arrived all of a dither as they'd been told the ferry hadn't left Volos until midday so weren't expecting us so soon......Welcome to Greece!!!!!