Back to Greece

It is 2am on Wednesday 22nd April and we are up at this ridiculous hour to ensure we catch our 05:45 plane from Gatwick to Athens. No problem with traffic or parking and we settled into our "free" airline lounge courtesy of Barclays Premier.
 

Another excellent easyJet flight and in under 4 hours we landed at Athens where we were met by our good friend George Koliris who Ray worked with at ICL in Athens in  1980/81. There had been a slight change of plan since in typical Greek fashion the ferry company had changed the timetable of the ferry to Kea from 15:30 to 18:30. Originally we had planned a lunch around the port area but George and his wife Evi, very considerately, thought that we should go back to their house for lunch, have a couple of hours rest, and then head of to the port of Lavrio. So after an excellent lunch of fresh grilled fish, we crashed our for a couple of hours and then were driven to Lavrio. The ferry crossing to the Island of Kea only takes an hour and it was a calm, sunny evening; the only concern being that because the ferry was late leaving Evi was worried we would miss the view of the sunset from their house on Kea! However, we were treated to an excellent sunset as the ferry approached the port of Korissia on Kea.

Whilst Kea is very close to the mainland it is one of the Cyclades islands (think Mykonos and Santorini), but has none of the noise or crowds that those islands sometimes suffer from. The next morning George and Evi took us on a tour of the south west, west and north of the island visiting Pisses, Koundouros and Otzias. Koundouros is where the rich have their villas and apparently in the summer the bay is crowded with anchored yachts of all shapes and sizes. As you can see from the photo, it was not like that when we visited!

An excellent lunch was partaken at a Tavera in Otzias in honour of George's name day (see later) and we then visited Korissia again for some supplies.

George and Evi's house is high up the mountains about 2 km from the islands capital of  Ioulis. The views down to the port are stunning and the island was looking well nigh perfect with beautiful wild flowers everywhere and the LLW was particularly impressed by the Cercis trees in full bloom.

Thursday April 23rd is of course St George's day and in Greece one's "name day" is marked by endless calls from friends and family calling with best wishes - and we are talking of 60/70 calls received by George Koliris on the day. When he was engaged in the phone  talking they called Evi and she answered on his behalf! I made a mental note to consider buying shares in OTE, the Greek telephone company!!

We absolutely loved Kea and will definitely be back; it is a stunning island and at this time of year is very peaceful. We had a very interesting visit to the archeological museum in Ioulis where the treasures were beautifully displayed.

After three nights on Kea we were al due to head back to the mainland but not before a stop at the Red Tractor Farm, which is a development of apartments, a vineyard and olive grove and a biscuit and chutney making enterprise which is owned by a Greek friend and his wife,, who is from California, although has been in Greece since the 80s.   They make cookies out of acorn flour which are very good and a number of chutneys - the lemon and black onion seed specimen we bought being very good. 

We then called into a garden centre (hooray says the  LLW) which is owned by George and Evi's son in law, Nichos.  The LLW was fascinated by a caper plant, which has very attractive foliage, although capers are most definitely not her thing.  

After crossing back to the mainland, George and Evi dropped us off at Markopoulo Cross where we picked up a taxi to take us to Glyfada, where we were meeting Olivia, her daughter Marianna, her son in law George and her new grandchild Stephanie. We had an excellent evening with them all at a Taverna in Glyfada.

We have not yet mentioned the financial problems in Greece and whilst most of our friends are weathering the storm fairly well, they are all very concerned about the direction being taken by the current government, an unholy alliance of far left and far right. Our eveing in Glyfada brought this home to us because Marianna and George told us that they are moving to the UK in September since George, a civil engineer, cannot find a job in Greece and Marianna has British citizenship having been borne in England.

After our meal Olivia drove us into Athens on her way home to Kifissia (a smart suburb of northern Athens) and we were duly delivered to our next stop, the Hapimag residence right on the edge of Plaka.