WELCOME TO THE LAND OF KEBAB, YIROS AND GYROS

WEATHER: Hot and 35C – like SUPER hot

HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Speaking to my god-daughters and BEST FRIEND on the phone today

BUMMER OF THE DAY:  I’m in Greece and can’t think of one at the moment

BUYS OF THE DAY: Washing put in for 15.00EUR to get done - bargain

WORD OF THE DAY: Yamas – cheers in Greek

With no concrete plans today, except for our meeting at 4pm today.  We decided to have a bit of a sleep in and we decided to breakfast at 9.30am this morning.  Now this is how a holiday should feel right!  Our hotel is right on the beach and the restaurant is located on the 7^th floor, with floor to ceiling glass windows, you can imagine what the view from here looks like overlooking the beach.  Ahhh the serenity. 

I had a few chores to get done today.  I needed to get my washing done, and we found a fluff and fold equivalent just around the corner from the hotel.  There were 4 of us that had a few bags and we were able to drop it off and we have to go back and collect it tomorrow after 2pm.  AWESOME!!  I can’t wait to get clean clothes back from a washing machine!!  It is the little things…… but it is - DONE

From here we had to get some things from the shops.  I needed to get some more deodorant and toothpaste, grab some alcohol for pre-dinner drinks and also some schnacks.  So we found a supermarket that was pretty cheap and got the shopping - DONE

I also needed to top up my UK Vodafone account.  It is pretty cool here in Europe, even though my Vodafone sim is a UK one, I can walk into any mainland Europe Vodafone shop and purchase credit for my phone.  It is pretty cool.  The only thing I can’t do is pay online with a credit card as it has to be a UK or European credit card, but so far I have not had any problems finding a shop so far.  So 20EUR added to card – DONE

I also found a post office on our walk back to the hotel.  So I walked back with the gals who were going to hit the pool, and I walked back to where we were to finally post my souvenirs back to Australia.  I had 2.45kg of stuff and cost me 39EUR, but I haven’t sent anything since Ireland and that also included 5 stamps and the box I posted it in.  I don’t think that was too bad.  I have sent 7 boxes home to date, and my Russian box was the first to be sent and the last to arrive last week.  Lucky I wasn’t in a rush to get it for any reason.  In saying that I think I paid for surface mail, so I guess it was on the slow boat.  But my box had been inspected by customs apparently and Shelly couldn’t collect it from her local post office, but had to go to the main post office at Stafford and show some ID…..  Maybe they think things are dodgy with so many boxes arriving from all over the world!  I always make sure that there is a present in the boxes for my god-daughters, just so that they don’t forget about me while I am away.  I am also sending wads of post cards to them and it can be quite difficult at times to find child friendly postcards especially when I was in Amsterdam and also Spain where there were bulls on everything, but I have done pretty well so far and try and have a postcard arrive each week at least.  But another chore completed – DONE.

I keep getting text messages from Vodafone telling me I have 100 minutes free international talk time from the last recharge that I did in Ireland.  So I thought why not ring the gals.  It was 9pm at night, they should be home – so ring a ding ding and Shelly answered the phone and I think she was speechless to start with as it has been over 2 months since we have heard each other’s voices!  It was SO GOOD to speak to Shelly, and Zoe and Tess sound like they have grown up so much.  I asked Tess how her party went and she told me that she missed me and when I spoke to Zoe and told her something, she said that I was so funny and she missed me as well!  Man it was great to hear them and it really sounded like they were just down the road.  I am not sure what happened, but I got about 15 minutes talk time and then the phone cut out.  100 free minutes my foot, but I think I will make an effort to call them more often, it really isn’t that expensive.  If I get a Greek sim-card the calls back to Australia are only 70c a minute, so 10 minutes for 7EUR sounds like a pretty cool deal to me.  I’m going to do it!!!

So we then got ready to meet the rest of the Contiki crew for 4pm as per our documentation, and when we went down at 4pm, the meeting sheet said it was 7pm.  So we now had 3 hours to kill.  So the gals went to the shop, bought some grog and mixes and we had a pre-meeting / pre-dinner drinky poos.  Kate and Jess both have new roomies, so they are now included into the Greek Posse so there were 8 of us drinking and just having a FAB time till 7pm.

We met our new Tour Manager Ed.  He is from Wales and seems quite nice.  There are 46 of us on this tour and there are only 6, yes SIX males on the trip!  One of them is in a couple, so that leaves 5 available men for 40 single women.  I wonder how this trip will turn out.  I think the dynamics will be a little different anyways, as we have 3 nights on each island; the girls won’t be totally reliant on Contiki males as such if you get my drift!  The group itself seems really good though, a lot of younger people and everyone seems keen to chat and speak to everyone else, so I do have a good feeling.  We also won’t be in each other’s pockets – ie: on a coach all day, we will only see each other at optional excursions or included dinners and breakfast I guess if people make it.  But it does feel good that at the back of your mind when you are sleeping that except for 4 times, it will be impossible to miss the bus / ferry.  This is a BIG fear of people sleeping in or drunk or getting home in the wee hours that this is always a possibility!  Not this trip – yee ha!!!  Especially as I don’t have my Contiki husbands now, but I do have my Greek Posse, and we watch each other’s backs.

Dinner was at the magical restaurant on the 7^th floor of the hotel, and we got to watch the sunset.  It was amazing and just a taste of what we will see on the islands I am sure.  We did have a Greek Salad and I do have to say it was flippin marvelous.  We are all still pretty knackered and we sobered up over the meeting and dinner, so we went upstairs to the pool bar for a drink and then turned in at 10pm.  We are still seeing this as a good idea and there is no shame in recharging our batteries for the onslaught on Thursday when we arrive into Mykonos.

Off to see some of Athens tomorrow – looking forward to seeing the Acropolis and the Parthenon.