Our apartment host Mikis again proved what a fantastic bloke he is, a fellow traveller that we had bumped into at Gatwick had forgotten her passport and sadly missed her flight. She had stayed at the apartments 7 times but this year had been unable to get a booking so was staying at another hotel in the resort. She managed, no thanks to the tour company, to book a flight with Aegean air to arrive a couple of days later. She was left stranded at the airport with no transfers again the tour company made no offer to assist with organising transfers even at her own cost. When Mikis found out he arranged for his father-in-law to drive to the airport and bring her to the resort 1hr 30mins away. He refused to accept any payment which was really touching and generous. The following week she transfered to our apartments as Mikis was not fully booked and TC had the gall to charge her £80 for admin!

 

The pool bar was ever open and reasonably priced and the hub of great conversation with our like minded inmates and Mikis. The BBQs were fantastic with huge choice of local dishes freshly prepared by Mikes mother and wife as well as the usual BBQ fayre prepared by Kostas his father. They also offered a lunch meze which consisted of 4 dishes all freshly made.

 

The weather was not good in the first week but we spent it touring the island seeing some of the places we had missed last year. In the second week it was beautiful with sunshine every day. On our last Thursday we took a jeep safari which took us along many mountain tracks and to visit places normally inaccessable, finishing up on the top of mount olympos which was breathtaking.

 

We are reliably informed that Olympus is no longer the tallest mountain on the island as they inadvertently blew a metre off the top when they used too much explosive when demolishing an aerial, causing another village to claim its mountain as the tallest. Only in Greece!!

 

We ate out at various tavernas once or twice each day, with only one below par meal. Saddo that I am I kept notes on the dishes and the standard of the tavernas so if anyone needs tips please p.m. me

 

We were dubious about returning but knew we had made the right call the moment we arrived to find we were remembered from last year and greeted with hugs from the family, it felt like we had just picked up where we left off! My wife cant wait to go back again, neither can I!