Day 1 - Monday 08-06-25: Kefalonia here we come……!

The long awaited day had finally arrived…..M&A were off to sunny Kefalonia for a well deserved holiday.  Sir Winston who never usually gets up before 10am was woken from his slumbers and taken out for a very early morning walk at 4.45am much to his disgust as he doesn’t usually get up until at least 10am however, he knew something was afoot and went into panic mode in fear of being left behind. Bless him, he too was going on his holidays to Wool, to stay with his Aunty Jane and Uncle Mike and of course by the time he’ll be dropped off at their abode you can bet he’ll have forgotten all about Maice!! Of course usually Milly would already have been dropped off at Purrfect Cattery but unfortunately I had to say goodbye to the lovely Milly some weeks ago but I’m sure she’s having a fabulous time in holiday heaven!

Both having packed the day before, in a surprisingly calm manner I might add, none of this hokey-cokey packing of previous years malarkey (although it did take us the most part of Sunday afternoon and evening) we were ready for our holiday adventures the following morning.

I’d made egg rolls for our ‘picnic’ on the bed at the Premier Inn Gatwick and set off to pick up Maice and Winston at 11.00am. Having already partaken in an hour and a half yoga session with Saleem via the Zoom she was full of energy and eager to get going. Upon arrival at Maice’s, Winston was still in panic mode and kept disappearing into the garden, running amok and resisting capture!

We eventually set off to Wool to drop off Winston when I realised I’d forgotten the Baby Bel cheeses for our picnic,

the small Greek tablecloth for our balcony table, the fly swot for those pesky mosquitos in the room at night (everyone should take one with them, they’re great) and Maice had forgotten her kindle. I gave her the option to turn back for it since we weren’t that far away but no, she decided to go with the flow and buy a few books at the airport.

In return for dropping Winston off at Jane & Mike’s we were rewarded with a goody bag from Jane to accompany our picnic on the bed. Bless her, she always packs us a little bag full of treats for our journey, as did Abi with some sweeties for the plane. Winston now happily ensconced in the J&M household we set off on our road trip to Gatwick. To be fair, it was a surprisingly good journey. There with no queues and Maice, in the passenger seat coped well with multi-tasking the phone directions and the printed out directions to the Premier Inn Gatwick airport. We made it with only one deviation which was around the big roundabout, which we did end up going round a few time as it was so confusing!

We arrived at the hotel, parked the car and went to reception to check in only there wasn’t a reception, only those self-service kiosks. Honestly, what happened to manned reception desks. Of course it didn’t recognise our booking so a member of staff had to come and help find us on the system!  There you are, you see how valuable a members of staff is.  We dropped our luggage off and decided as it was only 3.30pm in the afternoon and our flight wasn’t until 6am the next morning we’d go on a little adventure and went on our first free ‘excursion’ of the holiday…..we took the monorail to the south terminal and back again, it was all very exciting.  Of course, there was method in our madness as we needed to get our steps in, so our total steppage for that little interlude was 4,000 steps, which was very well worth it.

Finding ourselves well and truly in holiday mode we thought we’d go for a drink at the hotel bar, due to it being happy hour from 5-6pm. Typical, the bar was packed and there was nowhere to sit so we returned to our room and had our picnic on the bed……egg sandwiches, very tasteless vegetable crisps and Prosecco, red wine and Lindt chocolates courtesy of Jane. We then spent the evening watching TV, well I did as after 10 mins Maice fell asleep. The underground tunnels of Rome was very interesting, Clive Myrie in Italy was also very entertaining but the best by far was Dinosaurs which was absolutely riveting. Maice eventually woke up and we watched a programme about Alison Steadman, she of Abigails party and Shirley Valentine fame. All tellied out, we set our alarms for 3am, switched off the lights and went to sleep.

Wakey wakey……hey, we beat the alarm by ten minutes, were up and dressed and in the terminal building by 3.30am. It was very busy and we thought we’d have to queue for ages but to be fair the self-service check-in/bag drop queue went surprisingly smoothly, as did passing through security.  We didn’t think all the shops and restaurants would be open but they were so off we went to find somewhere for breakfast…..unfortunately the same idea was had by every other person at the airport at there were massive queues for all the eateries. Not to be deterred we decided to forgo breakfast and purchased two meal-deals from WH Smith to have on the plane then stood in the queue at Starbucks for our ‘wake-me-up before we go girls’ cappuccino’s.  Note to self…..must remember I’ve got my ‘Dora the Explorer bag on my back which apparently I keep knocking into people!

Before we knew it we’d boarded the plane, which was by no means full and were ready to go twenty mins before official take off. As it was, being early isn’t always a good thing as the reality was we didn’t take off for our 6am flight until 6.40am! Ah well, with the best will in the world. We managed to move seats and sit in a row of our own which gave us so much space, so all-in-all it was a good flight.

Stepping off the plane into a blast of heat was lovely, just think, we had ten days of unadulterated warmth to look forward to, how very lucky are we. Having initially thought the transfer to the apartments was one hour, we’d recently received a message from TUI advising us it was now two hours! However, as luck would have it when we entered the arrivals hall there was a Rep holding a sign with my name on it. Seems we had a mini-bus transfer with six other people making the journey much shorter, which in the end took just one hour. Of course this being Greece we didn’t depart from the airport straight away, oh no, we had to wait for the Rep to have his lunch delivered, eat some of it and then he obviously remembered we were waiting for our transfer and subsequently took us to our mini-bus! As we are well aware, σιγά, σιγα is the Greek way!

We arrived at our apartments, Harbour View in Poros, which is exactly how it looks in the photos and met Alex, the owners son who showed us to our room.  As apartments go it’s spacious, it’s got two bedrooms, one overlooking the sea, it’s gorgeous. We unpacked, changed into our sun clothes and went out to explore the area and get our bearings, find the beach, find the bakery and most importantly of all, find a bar/cafe with comfy seats in which to have our now customary Greek salad and bottle of wine. It was hot, and we were flagging, not that we’re complaining, but it was hot, not just hot but hot hot! Phew. We found the beach, which must be about 4,000 steps, quite a long way in the heat, then we retraced our steps and found a cafe with comfy seats and totally confused the waiter. We were desperate for a Greek salad but they only did baguettes and sandwiches however he went next door tot the taverna and ordered a take-away salad to be brought to us!  Now that’s service for you. They didn’t do bottles of wine either so we just ordered two Mythos beers which were very refreshing. The salad was gorgeous, although it came at a premium, almost double what a Greek salad is normally!!  With that we set off for the mini-market to purchase water and wine, and other essential items, such as fly swots, cheese, yoghurt and honey for breakfast. We were by now very weary and hot, we had after all been up since 2.30am! As we were walking past Margraili bar we saw two men setting out front drinking two lovely glasses of crisp dry white wine……we were salivating, over the wine that is and of course we didn’t need any extra encouragement, in we went, sat down and ordered ‘we’ll have what they’re having’.  Those glasses of wine were absolutely delicious and what was needed in order to haul our shopping up the hill to our apartment. Alex was around so not only did we tell him about the dodgy safe key we said we were going to walk up to the sister hotel, Oceanis View, which is just up the road but he was insistent he’d drive us up there…..just as well he did really as we probably would have died on the road up it was that steep and that far. It said it was 500m but it felt to us like 2 kilometres (not that we’ve any idea of distances!). OMG,  the views from up here are amazing. The view from our apartment is wonderful, but this was something else. We can use the pool here if we wish, all we have to do is ‘call and he’ll be there’ with his mini-bus. Now that’s what we call service! We enjoyed a refreshing Mythos beer overlooking the view and decided to return to the mini-market to buy matches for the citronella candles we’d purchased earlier and some Melba toast to accompany the cheese and hummus. We’re far too tired to go out to eat so we’re eating al-fresco on the balcony. We had our supper overlooking the sea and played rummy where after four games I was well and truly beaten! Next time…..!

Before we retired to our beds I updated the ‘holiday spreadsheet’ and realised I was €12 short, mmmm, now where could that possibly be. I was so tired and was not going to sleep until I’d found it …..turns out I’d used the wrong exchange rate, so it all came right in the end.

And so our long and weary day has come to an end, we’ve walked over 15,500 steps and 6.5 miles around Poros and looking forward to our beds. We’re also looking forward to a day on the beach doing absolutely nothing, zilch, de-nada, τιποτα!

Δα σε δω αύριο το πρωι….

Μ&Α χχ