We woke early and once again were surprised by how nice it was the other side of the balcony doors. It was wall to wall blue skies, sunshine, heat, no breeze and not a cloud in sight. Great. We’ve got two and a half days left of our holiday so we’ve got to make the most of this warm sunny weather.
We went for another early breakfast then packed our beach bags and walked the 100 or so steps to the pool. Lutz would be proud of us for walking so far today! Today, we’re going to throw ‘routine’ to the wind as they say and go ‘off-piste’ for the whole day so first things first. We wandered around the pool looking for the ideal sun-bed and found two at the other end of the pool. Next thing we didn’t do was head off to Ipanema for our daily frappe. Instead we headed off to the pool bar, some 20 steps away where Terry rustled up a lovely frappe, so much better than the one’s we served yesterday at Ipanema’s.
So, there we were sat on our sun-beds having a regroup in front of the lamp stand when along came Dave, or was it Alan! He set up his ‘two’ sun-beds and a chair two beds along from us then moved it all to some sun-beds by the pool bar. Then he moved back to the beds near us, bought a frappe, had a sip, put in on the chair and disappeared for two hours! He came back with a Tesco bag full of food which he proceeded to move from bag to bag before sitting on his sun-bed and sneakily eating whatever it was that was ‘hidden’ theirin. It’s amazing what you can observe when you have your sunglasses on and are pretending to be sunbathing!
During our regroup we decided not to have our usual Greek salad and Mythos beer. No, we decided that as we hadn’t been to Ipanema today we’d go and have a light lunch there. To be honest, other than proper restaurants there aren’t many cafe’s that are open during the day. We were served by the guy who did our coffee yesterday, but we’re not keen on him. He’s not a patch on Emma as he’s got absolutely no front of house skills, not like Emma who’s been relegated to pot washing and being behind the scenes. We did enjoy our wraps and our early Aperol Spritzes but we’re not going back again as long as he’s there!!
We returned to our sun-beds for the afternoon session and Dave alias Alan was nowhere to be seen again. Just as well it’s not busy around the pool other wise he’d be accused of hogging the sun-beds and the thing is, he’s not even staying here!!!
We spent the afternoon catching some extra rays before calling it a day and retiring to the balcony where we cracked open a bottle of our very expensive €2.80 wine, sat out and played ‘gin rummy’. Now, when we played this on the plane I won practically every hand. On the balcony Maice won all but two hands so had we have been scoring these hands it would no doubt have been a draw!
We dolled ourselves up for supper, this being our penultimate evening and headed across the road to the Oneiro restaurant where we both had the swordfish which was absolutely delicious after which we promenaded ourselves down the main street so we could at least get some steps in. Today must be the worst day for our steppage count as we’ve only done about 2,500 steps thus far and there’s not much of the day left to be adding much more! Part of our plan for this evening was to forgo our usual cocktails at Ipanema and instead spend time at the hotel bar. We find it rather odd that everyone seems to stare at us when we go there so we may as well turn into ‘party animals’ and give them something to talk about! The bar itself was busy so we positioned ourselves at the end of the bar and got talking to Claude, not his real name but neither of us can remember what he said it was. Claude who is from Switzerland and is travelling alone, has a grown up son, is a retired notary/solicitor and unfortunately had a whiff of body odour about his personage. Must be all the travelling he‘d done to get here! We chatted for a good half hour before we wondered where our friend Lutz was but apparently he‘d come and sat at the other end of the bar, out of sight and was chatting to some other woman! Ah, some people can be so fickle! Not to worry because three Germans; two woman and a man sat next to us at the bar. It was, as Maice said, her challenge to engage them in conversation which she did. So meet Ingrid who’s married to Ulli and their friend Ingrid! They‘re all retired and come from somewhere in Germany, we can’t remember as by this time we’d consumed a lot more alcohol than what we’re used to! They‘ve been coming to the Tropical Sol for the past 23 years and know the owners really well. Apparently one of the sons runs a very successful winery on the island….who knew! We had such a laugh with our new trio of friends that time passed very quickly and before we knew it we were headed down the catwalk, aka the walkway between the bar and our room and it was 1.20am. Our latest night out so far this holiday!
As we were strutting our stuff down the catwalk we bumped into ‘Henry’ the hedgehog who was also strutting his stuff crossing the catwalk. We were quite surprised to see him as it’s probably the first hedgehog we’ve ever seen in Greece. Very cute….
So, on that note it’s καληνυχτα from me, its λοιπον from Maice and it’s adios from Henry
M&A xx
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