Farewell Italia. . .yiassou Hellas!!!

It’s been an eventful couple of weeks since our last post and our arrival in Rome.
We had a fantastic stay in Rome. Our hotel was amazing – set just outside the Villa Borghese gardens alongside the Saudi embassy and a 20 minute walk through the park to the Spanish Steps. We also had a spectacular view of St Peter’s Basilica from our vernadah. It’s unbelievable (but true) that the dome of St Peter’s continues to be the tallest structure in Rome/Vatican City.
We arrived early afternoon on Friday the 27th and settled into the hotel. The kids were keen to swim so we headed to the pool and let them swim out their car frustrations! We decided to postpone a walk in town and ate in the hotel restaurant.
Saturday the 28th was a BIG day. First stop was the Spanish Steps, then Via Condotti, Via Del Corso, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, a fascinating tour of the Colosseum and we finished off for dinner at the Hard Rock Café. Sunday the 29th was a rest day – thank goodness - laying by the pool and swimming. The weather continued to be fantastic for the entire time we were in Rome – we were so lucky!
Monday the 30th, we decided to visit Vatican City. We took a fantastic tour! We started in St Peter’s Square and then the Vatican Museums and into the Sistine Chapel. We had an amazing guide and our tour lasted some 4 hours finishing off in St Peter’s Basilica. Unfortunately, the Pope was not in Vatican City at the time of our visit – apparently, the Pope goes away during the summer months. After an early dinner just outside the Vatican walls, we headed into the Piazza Del Popolo for a walk down the other end of the Via Del Corso (main shopping strip) and then back to the hotel.
Tuesday the 31st, we had another day by the pool swimming and relaxing. The boys visited the barber’s shop to have their hair cut and we headed into Piazza Navona for dinner (which was disappointing). Wednesday the 1st of September we headed back to the Colosseum, the Roman Forums, Bocca Della Verita and the Piazza Del Popolo to have a look at Santa Maria Del Popolo Church with the Raphael-designed Chigi Chapel.
We spent our last day in Rome by the pool and making our final preparations for our flight to Greece the next day. We asked the hotel concierge to recommend a restaurant for dinner and were directed to the “Paga Roma” – 15 minutes walk from our hotel. This restaurant was fantastic and reminded us of all the wonderful things about eating in Italy: good food (fantastic tiramisu), good service, fantastic wine and being so full we could barely walk back to the hotel. What a way to finish our stay in Rome!
The next day we flew out of Rome and into Athens – arriving about 2.20 pm. It was an uneventful and quiet flight (as Zoe slept most of the way – which was not surprising as we woke very early that morning). As we’d been driving for the last 54 days, we had forgotten how much luggage we have. Consequently, we were unable to get one taxi into Plaka (central Athens) – deciding instead to get a private service to take us in. Our driver was fantastic (thanks, Dimitri!!) and efficiently got us (and our mountains of luggage) to the hotel by 3.30pm. By the by, we were pleasantly surprised by the change in Athens and the Athenian roads since our last visit (13 years ago).
We were sooo delighted by the location of our hotel – “Plaka Hotel”. As its name suggests it is located in the Plaka District of Athens, at the base of the Acropolis and is teeming with shops with traditional Greek items, restaurants and cafes. In addition, the hotel had a roof-top terrace that had unsurpassed views of the Acropolis and the Parthenon. Brilliant!
We dumped our luggage in the hotel and headed out into the streets of Plaka for a late lunch. Yeeros or “gyros” was on our minds and the first restaurant that we came across served us up delectable yeeros with an ice-cold frappe (like an iced-coffee – just less milk) to wash it down. After that we headed into Monastiraki’s flea market. We were on the hunt for a bouzouki for the boys and found a number of shops with excellent examples of hand-made bouzoukia. . .just have to decide which one to buy!
Jewellery shops abound in the Plaka district and we did a bit of shopping and finished our evening with a lovely meal that reminded us of home!
Saturday 4th September, we took a double-decker bus tour of Athens city which was fantastic! After that we headed back to our hotel lobby where we were meeting Thea Vassou, Theo Dimitri and cousin Michael. It was wonderful to see them again and we spent the next few hours catching up and sharing a meal together at one of the numerous restaurants in Plaka. Sadly, Thea had to leave by 4.30pm to journey back to Evia about 2 hours outside of Athens!
The next day (5th September) was Father's Day and we started our day by visiting the Acropolis and the Parthenon - walking there directly from our hotel. It was unbelievably hot and we wilted under the heat of the sun - but at the same time were awestruck by the magnificence of this ancient structure.
Back to our hotel after that to make some calls back home and get ready to go and visit cousin Stavrou and his family. We jumped in a cab and 20 minutes later we were met by Stavrou and his lovely family - wife Eleni and daughters Effie and Vassiliki! We spent a lovely afternoon together catching up and the children became acquainted with their cousins. Effie is close to Dean's age and made a huge effort to speak to both Dean and Andrew in English - while our boys made some effort to say some Greek words. The little ones - Zoe and Vassiliki (3 and 4 respectively) played so well together and managed to communicate with each other even though neither understood what the other one was saying!!!! We had a wonderful afternoon and Stavrou drove us back into town at about 1 am.
Monday the 6th of September was our last day in Athens and we spent the morning preparing our bags and doing some last minute shopping in Plaka, then onto the airport for our flight to Mytilene on the island of Lesvos.
Our flight was uneventful and we arrived in Mytilene on time around 6.20 pm. Unfortunately, when we arrived our hire car was in bad shape - a flat tyre and with the to-ing and fro-ing between the airport and the car-hire office to sort out the flat tyre - we didn't arrive in Agiasos (a small village about 25 minutes away from the town of Mytilene) until after 9pm. By the time, Steven's mother was beside herself and waiting for us in the village square!!!
We had a lovely dinner in the town centre (agora) and caught up on our respective news. The next couple of days were housekeeping days. . .with lack of access to washing facilities since Florence - we had pretty much used up most of our clean clothes!! Thank goodness for Steven's mum who helped out with all the washing.
Staying in the old family home on the island was definitely an experience for the children as it had no hot water system and the other facilities were quite rustic!!! All good fun, anyway!
Over the next few days we also caught up with the Tinellis cousins in Mytilene. That was lovely for Steven and the children who met a whole new side of the Tinellis family. Steven was especially thrilled to being seeing Panagioti again and they got on like a house on fire as we say. . .
The days passed by filled with yummy Greek home cooking, visits to the town square, Greek coffee, frappes, driving to various monasteries that Steven's mum wanted to go to and visits with family members whom we'd never met before or we were catching up again with. Thanks to Strati and Eleftheria for a lovely dinner on the last Wednesday of our visit. Forgot to mention we all suffered from the snotty nose syndrome while we were in Agiosos - but this did not interfere with our visit too much.
Before we knew it, it was time to leave Greece. We spent the last day washing and packing as we had to leave Agiasos at 5.15am on Friday to get to the airport on time. Who knows when we'll be back again. . .but we had a great time!