Day 4 - Thursday 12.06.25: How do you like your eggs in the morning…..!

Every other balcony here at Harbour View apartments seem to have their umbrellas up except on ours. Don’t get us wrong, we do have one, it’s just that it’s stood unopened in the corner of the balcony, feeling, we think, somewhat unloved. So, this is the morning to put things right. We were sat on the balcony having our breakfast and the sun was streaming in and it was so hot we thought why not give ourselves some shade on the balcony and put up the umbrella. Well, we soon realised, that it was easier said than done. Wrestling this ‘oversized’ umbrella to the centre of the balcony we attempted to open it up using its built in winder arm. Honestly, it was like a triffid. As it opened up it got bigger and bigger until it totally engulfed the balcony,  plus to make matters worse when we sat down it provided absolutely no shade at all due to it being so tall. Goodness knows what the neighbours thought was going on as we couldn’t stop laughing at this debacle. Not only did the umbrella hang over the balcony we couldn’t get in and out of the balcony door so our valiant efforts were in vain.  There was nothing for it but to wind it back down again and put it back in its corner.

After breakfast, Maice did a quick yoga session, we packed our beach bags ensuring we remembered our frozen bottle of water, you know, so we could save ourselves €2 when we’re at the sun-beds and before we knew it we were sat in the Remetzo cafe bar enjoying our early morning frappes. As we’ve said previously, this place is built into the cliff and the interior design emulates that of a yacht, it’s actually really well done. Its obviously very popular throughout Kefalonia because mid frappe some sort of coach party full of Americans turned up, not to sit down and order anything but to take photos of Rock….so there you have it, not only is he a handsome Rock he’s also very popular as everyone wants to have their photo taken with him!

We walked to the bakery and were the only ones there, chose our spinach pies went to pay, turned round to leave and all of a sudden the place was packed. Just as well we got there when we did as we had the last of the spinach pies! We took the short cut to the beach which although is less steppage for us, there is more shade. Down at the beach the sun-beds were empty again except for one couple who were sat on the sun-beds next to the ones we wanted so instead of sitting right next to them on the empty beach we thought we’d go the other end. We immediately made ourselves at home, laid out our towels and went in the sea for a dip to cool down. Observing from the water it seemed that we were in someone’s favourite spot as this couple came along and seemed most disgruntled to find towels on ‘their’ sunbeds. Should have got here earlier then! Then before we knew it our sunbeds were surrounded with people. There was this whole big chunk of sun beds that were empty and now down at our end it was busy!

Now we’re at the beach we’ve decided to throw caution to the wind and change things round a bit. We’re going to take our spinach pies home and have them for supper on the balcony feeling we need a night in to give our bodies a rest after too much excessive heat and over indulgence.  Instead for lunch we’re going into the taverna for a Greek salad. But, things happen when you change the plan. Our Greek salad turned out to be an ‘onion’ salad which didn’t bode well for Maice who doesn’t like raw onion and I end up eating it all and it also had very little feta. We asked for bread so we could mop up all that lovely olive oil but when the salad arrived it was served with 3 very small Melba toasts. Now there are two of us so why could they not have given us 4 Melba toasts so we could have 2 each ……..but 3!!’

Thinking about supper tonight we had a large tomato in the fridge and needed some salt so a trip to the mini-market was on the agenda when we left the beach. On the list was salt, eggs for breakfast and candles (not fork handles), citronella candles to ward off the mozzies however having walked up and down the aisles looking for said candles we couldn’t find any so went up to the till where we found two old boys playing with their worry beads (κομβολοι). Things got a little bit lost in translation to the point where we nearly left with numerous boxes of matches so we purchased the salt and left. Then we realised on the way home we’d forgotten the eggs. Fortunately we came across a vegetable market which sold eggs for 3 euros. Yum, looking forward to having our hard boiled eggs in the morning.

So far we’ve spent three days at the beach and have talked about getting out and about to see more of the island. When we booked the holiday we knew there was a ferry from Poros and thought it would be great to take the ferry to wherever it went however seems it only goes to Killini, a port on the mainland which, according to Alex is not worth going to. So then we thought we’d take the local bus to the capital Argostoli but there is only one bus at 7.15am in the morning and only one back at 9pm at night and if its full or you miss it then you’d need to get a taxi back, which would cost a fortune as it’s over an hours drive away. So our only option is to hire a car. Alex (from the hotel) can organise car hire so we called him at 4.30pm on the ‘special’ phone to come and get us and take us up to the hotel so we could sort it out. As we were waiting on the steps his dad comes along in his pick-up truck and said Alex is not there, drove off and came back ten minutes later in the mini bus. Can you believe this, we got told off for ringing before 5 pm as ‘Alex was busy’ due to it being transfer day!!  Well we didn’t know that! When we saw Alex we explained we only wanted to hire a car for one day, preferably an automatic car but he said we couldn’t hire the automatic car for one day because it was a brand new car and we could only hire it for two days or more! We’re sure there’s some logic there somewhere but we can’t quite fathom that out at this precise moment in time. A manual car it was then and lets just hope that on this hilly and mountainous island we don’t have to do many hill starts! I always shudder at my experience of driving up an extremely steep hilly road and going into a very sharp bend in Skiathos with Pearl and Dianne….I always wonder if the skid marks are still etched into the tarmac!!  Our mission accomplished, the car is booked for Monday. Apparently Alex is going to drive down to pick us up at our apartments at 8.30am then drive us back up to the Oceanis View hotel to get the car and then we will drive back down the hill passing our accommodation in order to get to the main road. Couldn’t be simpler! We asked Alex if we could have a map in advance of getting the car so we can plot our journey as we can’t seem to find one in the village and he reluctantly gave us one that he had but made us promise to leave it in the car when we returned it!!! So, as I am the driver and Maice, god help us all, is the navigator she needs to ensure she handles it with care!

Just below the Oceanis View hotel is the Agrapidos restaurant which came highly recommended by the chatty woman in the green dress so we stopped off and booked a table for tomorrow evening. Another mission accomplished we walked down the very steep hill to our apartment noting that we would be walking back up it tomorrow evening for our supper!

So tonight we’re having a night in and having our spinach pies for supper, our one big tomato with our newly purchased salt, such a lovely tomato, and fruit pastilles for dessert courtesy of Abigail. Whilst we were eating al fresco and playing rummy on the balcony we put our six eggs on the stove to cook. An hour later Maice suddenly jumped up…….’the eggs’ she said. We rushed through the balcony doors only to be hit in the face by the acrid smell of burning. We whipped the pan off the stove and onto the wooden chopping board to let it rest. There was a lot of hissing and popping emanating from the pan and when we removed the lid, oh dear. It was a disaster darling. The eggs were burnt, the pan was burnt and when we removed the pan from the chopping board that too had a round burn mark on it which on closer inspection looked a bit like the planet Jupiter! We put the pan outside the front door to cool down but then thought better of it as people do walk past it to get to their apartments. We managed to extricate the eggs from the pan and put them on a plate to cool down then plunged the pan into the sink with cold water where it sizzled and hissed for a while. As you can imagine the smell in the apartment was awful so for the next thirty minutes we set about trying to remove the evidence of our cooking travesty! We wrapped the egg carcasses in serviettes and triple bagged them before putting them in the bin and as long as there was no odour in the morning, the cleaner wouldn’t have a clue!

We took ourselves back to the balcony and continued our game of rummy and 5 dice and drank our village wine like nothing had happened…..what someone burnt the eggs!  Ha, ha…..as if we’d do such a thing!

Καληνύχτα ……Μ&Α χχ