Day 8 – Monday – Nice beach shame about the grockles
We spent most of the day at the hotel until about 4pm, and got lunch at the day bar – pulled pork in a bun again. Finished reading the Sherlock Holmes book and had a dip in a couple of the pools to cool down. There’s the main pool which isn’t too deep and then a much smaller plunge pool in one corner of the grounds with water jets in it and a ledge underwater you can sit on. I think there’s about 7 or so private pools dotted around and also hot tubs associated with the downstairs rooms in our main block of the hotel but also over the road in the block that also houses the reception area. Here’s a link to their website: Kouros Exclusive. I watched out for ants and started the Ariadne book.
After 4, we took our phones, some water and our map and walked to Ladiko Bay and next door to that Vagies Bay, a women-only nudist beach, only joking, it’s also known as Anthony Quinn Bay as mentioned in my previous post. He’s an old film star who used to own the beach apparently. He was in loads of movies including Zorba the Greek ,Lawrence of Arabia and most notably in this context The Guns of Navarone which was filmed in part on the island. On our map it says Anthony Queen, which was a bit confusing for a while.
Both beaches were pretty to look at but full of what we call grockles in North Wales i.e. unwanted and generally smelly tourists. I know what you’re thinking and yes after 45-minute walk I was pretty smelly too. Also popped into the very nice Pavo cafe patisserie on the way back – good views, nice desserts and a white peacock. It was a really nice relaxing place away from all the hustle and bustle. I though the white peacock was a bit freaky to be honest.
Dinner was at a taverna on the main road established in 1982 and called Sepp. I had chicken souvlaki Siggy had moussaka, both okay but nothing to make you jump in the air and click your heels. I miss the days where I was tucking into mixed grills with wild abandon. Then we wandered down bar street because it was less rowdy than usual and round to the right to a cocktail bar called Ambience which had a live DJ on and a good range of cocktails. Then back up to cocktail bar called KGB which is between Paparazzi and On the Rocks, where we relived our youth by having two bottles of Smirnoff Ice.
I have not seen any mosquitoes until tonight when we saw a few knocking about. I think the wind is keeping them away. I only have one bite on my arm and I’m pretty sure that’s actually an ant bite.
Day 9 – Tuesday – Phoenix foot
According to Siggy’s weather app, today was going to be a windy day. As it turned out it wasn’t any windier than yesterday, but we stayed on the hotel grounds just in case. We didn’t want to get sand-blasted on the beach. After another great breakfast, the first order of the day was to get the hotel maintenance man to fix some new plastic bits onto both our sun beds so they could be reclined properly at various angles. We found that otherwise the broken ones gave you one up option or down, as Siggy pointed out this is a four star hotel, so it needed sorting out. And it was within five minutes, which was great.
The average age of guests (not counting the one baby who has slipped through the ‘adults only’ clause) has dropped over past few days with departures and new arrivals. This is not a good thing. Despite the ‘no diving’ sign people were doing back flips in the main pool today causing some localised flooding around some of surrounding sun beds. It’s easy to label fellow holidaymakers as wankers when they act so selfishly. Another example of wankerish behaviour was a man I saw on our way to Rhodes town who having finished his bottle of water just threw it into the road.
Unfortunately, I think Faliraki has got a higher contingent of wankers among my fellow tourists than anywhere else we’ve been in Greece. I also think from overhearing the various excited yells as the fuse of japery is ‘lit’ that the majority of these wankers are from the UK. I feel like apologising to every Greek man, woman and child for their stupid behaviour. I am well aware that I am 50ish and this comes across as me being a moaning old git, but I can’t stand yobbish behaviour, especially when I’ve paid good money for a decent hotel only to find they’ve let a bunch of wankers in. They need to redefine what they mean by ‘adult’ and maybe shift the age limit upwards to cut out the under 25s?
Still full of righteous indignation, we had dinner at Dimitra Taverna not too far from Ambience cocktail bar and having an area at the front overlooking the beach – chicken souvlaki for me and big pork chop for Siggy. I was actually after having some sardines for a change but the waiter pretty much said they weren’t a main dish, so I just defaulted to the chicken, again. It was very nice and Siggy’s pork was also good – nice vegetables and potatoes. I think we shared some hummus too.
Then Siggy insisted we have a cocktail at one of the bars on wankers’ Street, I mean bar street and so we went to the Jamaica cocktail bar. The drinks were good, in fact Siggy claimed it was the best white Russian in town, and because it was early it was relatively free of wankers and the music was not at ear drum damaging levels.
Then to Bliss for a Vergina beer which was nice – less bitter than Mythos more similar to the local Zythos. Then to Colossus established 1947 which must be when the place started attracting tourists I guess given that there’s another cocktail bar called 1947. Colossus is a good sized bar with good staff, the cocktails are a bit hit and miss to be honest, but where they are really not doing themselves any favours is the choice of music which seems to be a local streaming channel playing obscure lacklustre nineties music which is neither country, rock or really any definable genre beyond bland. It would make for a great 80s themed bar or a rock bar. The bad music is the main reason we’ve only been popping in for a quick one. A lot of places were doing karaoke tonight, so things could’ve been worse.
I had a Buddha bowl at the daytime bar at the hotel – quinoa beetroot avocado tomatoes lots of super foods. The waitress showed me her Harry Potter inspired Phoenix tattoo on the front of her foot just above the ankle, Siggy was interested in what it was, so I asked to see. She had others hidden away about her person, but I didn’t make any further enquiries. Later we looked at some tattoo parlours on bar street (actually Ermou Street just for the record) and they had some photos of impressive work up on the wall but you wonder if any of the tattoos were actually done in that parlour. Neither of us are Harry Potter fans and we can’t think of anything we’d want permanently inked on our bodies.
Day 10 – Wednesday – Another Day, Another Salad
Was a beach day. I saw a little lizard with an iridescent blue tail and a green body in Victoria taverna at lunch. I had their Victoria salad – some really nice soft creamy lumps of local goat or sheep milk cheese, dried figs, apricots, lettuce and sesame seeds, plus the bread was fresh today. Siggy had tomato and cucumber salad again. Carried on reading Ariadne.
It was still windy today and that’s perhaps why our bit of the beach wasn’t very busy. Which suited me just fine. No wankers at all today. Worse thing that happened was Siggy accidentally buying a big bottle of sparkling instead of still water in the afternoon. I was careful with the sun today and the wind can deceive you into thinking you’re not burning. I kept topping up my lotion and sitting in shade periodically.
Siggy on the other hand is going for the honey-basted suckling pig approach and I do worry about skin cancer. But she won’t be told. Sure she uses lotions but for the deep tan she craves they’re low protection factors and tanned skin is damaged skin right?
Went to Rise for dinner – pork bao buns as a shared starter and then two different pasta dishes for mains. All very nice but mine did have a lot of barely cooked lardons in it which put a bit of a dampener on things as I had to pick them out to avoid eating uncooked pork fat. If it hadn’t been for that it would’ve tied with Bliss for the best meal. Again not Greek food. Unfortunately this time I’ve not had anything traditional that really blew me away apart from that lovely soft cheese at lunch time and of course the local beer Zythos.
After Rise we went over to nearby Bliss for a couple of cocktails – I had a good mojito and Siggy had an Aquarius off the zodiac themed list which tasted like those banana sweets you get in pick and mix. Then we tried KGB again but there were girls dancing on top of the bar – not dancers employed by the owners, but young tourists. At least they still had their knickers on, at that point. So that visit was aborted and instead we walked down and around to Ambience.
They had a live rock band on who were very good, the lead singer had a great rock voice, but we only caught about six songs. I had a beer, Siggy had a screaming orgasm and then we went to Coco who were playing mostly eighties tunes so we had some Smirnoff Ices and let the years fall away.
couchmagpie 