Dolphins were mentioned somewhere in the sales pitch for our trip to the neighbouring island of Skopelos. We didn’t see any. However, we didn’t see a giant dog shit or a dead seagull either, which was nice. In fact I enjoyed this trip rather more than the ‘around the island trip’. The three beaches we visited were nicer and we had more time on each beach.
Skopelos was where a lot of the film Mamma Mia was filmed in case you didn’t know. The Mamma Mia side of things wasn’t forced down your neck which was also a good point – I had visions of an hour-long happy clappy sing-a-long on the way to the island. There was music from the film on the boat which was okay, I’m partial to a bit of Abba, and then there was a short quiz and a dance along to Dancing Queen on the way back to Skiathos Town. I answered the question ‘what is a Supertrouper?’ and won a free ticket to see the film at the open are cinema in town that night (which remained unused). I knew the answer from watching Swap Shop as a kid – I’m sure it was the question for a phone-in competition.
Celebrity lookalike was one of the tour reps on board who had a more than passing resemblance to Mylene Klass. Some people paid 30 Euros each for the trip via their tour reps, we paid half that by booking direct with the boat at the New Port.
The one bit of holiday food I had yet to consume was ticked off the list when we got back to Skiathos Town – the gyros pitta a familiar foodstuff of many a drunk at the end of a beery night out, but made with pork rather than mechanically separated lamb mulch. They put a few chips inside the pitta as well so it is a tasty thing of fast-food beauty. This was to make up for a rather disappointing mackerel in a taverna on the second beach, Panormos, which was served up as ‘fish of the day’ but had all the hallmarks of being yesterday’s leftovers, and was no better than something you could buy in a tin from Tesco. The temperature in Skiathos Town at 5pm was 31C.
The third beach, Milia, had a little bit of a nudist section near where we came ashore. Some bloke was lying face down on the beach with his bare arse on display prompting remarks as we disembarked along the following lines; ‘it’s a full moon’, ‘run up and give it a slap’, ‘when I said I’d come for the craic that’s not what I had in mind’ etc. I got a lot of Almost Moon read while Siggy worked on her tan.
Tea at Ratatouille’s was generously proportioned and eased down by a litre of Rose wine. I worry that if anyone from the Disney Corporation visits the taverna they are going to get in big doo-doo regarding copyright. We wandered over to Chris’s for cocktails and more football – Italy versus Brazil. Not a great match. A programme for dullards on ITV was slightly more entertaining – it was one of those list programmes – about dance moves. For instance I didn’t know that the bloke out of Shalamar was doing the moonwalk more convincingly than Michael Jackson way before he made it famous. In fact they showed the moonwalk being done in a black and white jazz film. Number one on the list was Gene Kelly doing the Singing in the Rain dance, number two was the routine in Thriller, number three was Torvell and Dean doing the Bolero – given that this was an ITV production I suppose we should not have been too surprised given that they do Dancing on Ice. Anyhoo…
couchmagpie 