We were woken at 6am, a bit of a shock I must say, by Kylie Minogue singing her little heart out to 'Better the devil' followed five minutes later by a very loud sounding car-horn emanating from Maice's mobile phone. We dozed until Kylie gave another rendition of her song and rather than wait for the car-horn again which probably woke all our neighbours, we got up. We sorted ourselves out and made up our towel elephants, a parting gift for the cleaner......we'd practiced the night before from a youtube video and are quite pleased with how they turned out.
We checked the room, once, twice, three times before we were happy we'd packed everything, gave Betty a watering (no sign of George this morning.....probably too early for him) and set off, lugging our suitcases down the thirty one unequal steps to reception and waited for our pick-up.
We weren't sure what mode of transport would be taking us to the airport but it turned out to be a coach, which had parked at the top of the road and the non-English speaking Greek driver, Mr Grumpy we'll call him, came to fetch us. I don't think he was impressed as we were in the middle of our rummy tournament.......well, no one told us we had to be at the top of the road and as we were dropped off by mini-bus at the hotel on our arrival, that's where we thought we'd be picked up. We were the last pick up and seemed to get a frosty reception from the other passengers when we got on the coach......honestly, you wouldn't think they'd just had a holiday!
It was a smooth, uneventful journey to the airport and we arrived three hours before our flight. Before checking in we ate our breakfast rolls outside in the fresh air and were joined by a friendly sparrow. George must have sent a message to his feathered friends at the airport that we were here so we fed them some watered bread. Off to check-in, through customs, into the duty free shop and finally through passport control and that was it, we were in the departure lounge. We weren't stopped and searched, our bags weren't scrutinised, it was a very smooth operation.
We eventually took a window seat in the lounge, having moved seats four times, ordered a frappe, which was lovely, just how we like it, got the cards out and continued with our rummy tournament. I must say, this tournament is our closest yet, lots of nail biting tense moments and both us being in the lead at some point. How will it end? Who will be the Afitos tournament champion? Only time will tell and not long to wait now.
The two male trolley-dollies, one didn't even look eighteen, came along and I took the liberty of ordering a white wine......Maice is on the water as she's driving and then we pulled down our seat trays and had a mini picnic, feasting on cheese, pepper and crisp rolls hand made, remember by Maice! Fine dining at its best at an altitude of 30,000 feet! Reading the in-flight magazine we came across this page advertising 'feverfew' tonic and what type of gins to serve it with......I'm sure there's a few of you out there that will be interested in this educational find!
We arrived in Gatwick airport thirty minutes late but amazingly enough, and not what we expected, it was sunny and fairly warm, which was a bonus. There were two queues operating for passport control, one with a person sitting in their little box and the other was the do-it-yourself electronic version, which was the queue we found ourselves in. It was interesting looking at both queues interweaving as people walked between the tapes, all you could see was a sea of bobbing heads all walking like automatons. Through passport control and we picked our bags off the conveyor belt immediately and then we caught the mini-bus to take us to the car. All in all it was a very straight forward experience.
We woke SatNav Steve who was a bit reluctant to speak to us at first, so having gone the wrong way out of the car park he soon put us right and was back to his usual Aussie cheery self. We stopped off at Winchester Services to have ourselves a hot cappuccino and to finish our Greek double cheese rolls which we decided to eat in the car in the carpark. They were decidedly claggy, which was only to be expected I suppose as they were almost twenty four hours old and very well travelled. It was also time to put out to pasture our red holiday kitty purse and resurrect our UK kitty purse. We've had three on the go this holiday.....we've had our UK kitty, held by Maice, we've had our holiday kitty, held by me and then we've had the foursome kitty also held by me. Maice and I still have some euros left over so they'll be staying in the holiday kitty purse until we head off to Monte Carlo.....thankfully it won't leave us bust!
So, homeward bound, we were in Dorset, on home territory and the sun was still shining. What a lovely end to our holiday. We're both home now, the washing is in and on the drive back home we both said how much we're looking forward to getting into our lovely, cosy beds. No doubt we'll start thinking of work tomorrow but most importantly is what to wear to show off our tans? Now that's something to think about!
Consulting 'Autumn is coming' it would appear that I finally won the rummy tournament.....the scores in the book are; Angela 8,590 and Maice 8,470, just 120 points in it.
So here ends another fabulous holiday in Afitos. It’s a beautiful part of Greece and we’ve enjoyed every minute of our time spent here. We’ve laughed a lot, we’ve walked a lot, we’ve enjoyed good food and the occasional glass of wine and it’s been great. Roll on our next holiday…
M&A xx
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