If you read my last post, you’ll have gasped along with the *very thrilling tale* of some people who went on an aeroplane. No doubt you’ve been waiting to hear what happened next so here goes…
We woke up at 7, after a fairly solid 12 hours’ sleep. We were all sharing a room so the prospect of a night’s sleep had seemed like an impossible dream. Still, the full day of travelling the day before had worked wonders and we somehow slept through. Going up to breakfast on the 6th floor, we had a glorious view of the sea and, of course, the dual carriageway that we had to cross to get to the sea. It was going to be a beach day, oh yes.
We were also sharing our breakfast buffet with the Chinese National Water Polo team, although it took us a few days to find out exactly who they were. At this point, it was just a bunch of Chinese athletes and a stern looking coach. Roo was thrilled to think that we were breakfasting with some real Olympians in the home of the Olympics. I have no idea whether they were Olympians or not but I let him think they were.
So, about that beach then. Nathan had done a recee on Google Maps and found a beach which looked sandier than the stony one near our hotel. We set off up the dual carriageway to find it and along the way we learnt about the loose relationship Greek drivers have with the rules of the road. A green man combined with a zebra crossing seems to give you the right to cross but never count on it. Always looks. Luckily our hometown of nearly-Essex is full of bad drivers so nothing really surprised us.
There seemed to be a lot of beach along that road and not a lot of way to get into any of it. Finally, we came to the EOT Beach Club, which was marked on the paper map as “Organised Beach”. Turns out that “Organised” means you have to pay for it. We’d already walked too far in the heat to turn back so we just paid 16Euros, which was the Mon-Fri rate and included free deckchairs. It was almost certainly a rip off but the beach was, indeed, organised and we could spread out over 4 loungers and stay all day, reading and eating our sandwiches. If we’d managed to sync our activities and all be reading at the same time, it would have been blissful but hey, holidays with kids don’t really work like that. Still, I spent most of the day in the sea, which is where I’m happiest in the 30C heat, AND I managed to read most of a novel so something must have gone right.
That evening we were out to eat again as the hotel only provided breakfast. Our dinner place this time was the O’Canto pub, which sounded like it might cater to fussy English kids suspicious of change. And it did! I ordered a huge platter of chicken fingers, wedges, halloumi, local sausages, salami and corn pitta, which I shared with Eva and she even ate some of it. Nathan had a burger again.
I know, I know, this isn’t the most thrilling holiday diary ever but wait! Tomorrow gets properly historicky and there’s even a battleship somewhere along the way. Stay tuned for Part 3…
