Macs with Packs: 10 Days in Greece

First, a brief explanation..... John's cousin's wife is Greek and she has a house on a small Greek island called Halki. Last year was the 100th anniversary of the house so we had a huge celebration there with about 40 other friends and family members. This year a few of us agreed to meet there again. We prepared ourselves for another liver-pickling, hangover-inducing catch-up!

It took us two days to reach the island even though we weren't that far away. Before we got there we wondered if our memories of the island were glorified by the wonderful time we had last time. Was it really as good as we remembered it being? No - it was even better!

We were met at the port by John's cousins, John and Colin, (known locally as Yiannis and Lambros) with ouzos in hand in the middle of the afternoon. We were obviously launching straight into it!

All of John's and Colin's families were there as well as some notable others. It was great to get to know the younger generation a bit better. We all had a ball. We ate memorable meals at Kiki's and other places. (Thanks for the photo Paris).

Of course we worked our way through the cocktail list at the Steki Bar. Maria and her family were still running the bar and it was like we had never left. We had one huge night where Breanna and Alex took control of the music and we danced and sang til 3am. The memorable hit was "Living Next Door to Yorgos", complete with the chant in the middle!

We stayed in the same house as last time and the view was just as spectacular. I still love how crystal clear the water is. It was quite hot and I swam several times every day. Heaven!

We also went to Ftenagia Beach and nothing had changed there either. Nick was still running the restaurant and the water was still beautiful.

We had five days of this before it was time to leave. Ahhhh, it was truly wonderful!

Instead of returning straight back to Croatia, we took a detour and visited Symi island. We're Rick Stein fans, particularly of his food series Venice to Istanbul as it covers a lot of the area we are visiting. He always does his cooking parts in a big house in Symi and it looked beautiful so we thought we'd check it out as it's not far from Halki. It turns out that there were no direct ferries so we had to ferry back to Rhodes, taxi and bus to Rhodes Town, then catch another ferry to Symi.

Symi was beautiful but very disappointing. It was so noisy! We stayed right in the main part of town thinking that we wanted to be among the gorgeous old houses, but they are all clustered around the port and the port is so busy! Huge ferries pull in alongside oodles of yachts and fishing boats. Engines roared, anchors rattled and horns blared. Here's the view from our room.

To top it off, we were also above the bus station and the family in the room above us clomped around on the wooden floors annoying the bejeeses out of us when we stayed in our room.

Ok - so that's enough whingeing - here are the good parts.

The houses tumbling down the steep hill to the sea really are gorgeous.

There was a heat wave while we were there. One day it was so hot that if I stepped into the sun I could feel it burn instantly. It turns out that it was 39 degrees in the shade that day. It sure felt like it. To avoid the heat we would get up early each morning and get a walk done while it was comparatively cool. It was amazing how very few people were doing the same. Even the bakery didn't open til 7am. By then it was around 30 degrees.

We had fun exploring the town on those walks. We climbed to the top of the town where some gorgeous churches were.

We loved the sign on the church gate.....

The views from the top were superb.

I'm not much of a cat person but the cats here just seemed so photogenic.

The cats are a bit less tame here and are largely not de-sexed. They are breeding like rabbits. I saw one half-grown kitten getting raped by an adult cat. She was miaowing pitifully - or maybe I'm wrong and she was miaowing orgasmically! Either way, she was way too young to be a mum but that's nature for you.

Like houses on many Greek islands, some were falling down, some were renovated and some were in-between. Of course, I had to take photos of the gorgeous old paint layers and colours.

The harbour might have been noisy but it was entertaining. There were heaps of yachts but the super-yachts were incredible. There was plenty of serious cash parked in this port!

Even the ferries were somewhat entertaining. Some of them were huge. Trucks were driving into this one.

There are a few beaches (mostly pebbly) around the island and to get to them you catch a local boat. We caught one to a small beach one day and it was lovely. There were several options about when we could return to the town and in our conversation with the captain about this we asked if we had to book a specific time. He said no. John asked, "But what if the boat is full?" The captain looked at John like he has just asked if the sky is green and replied, "I just put more on!" He then proudly told us how he once fitted 130 on the boat. I counted the seats - there were about 40!

On our last morning we walked to another bay and found a lovely quiet fishing village with a place you could swim and a small taverna. This was much more our style! I loved the menu here.

Before we could return to Croatia we had to spend another night in Rhodes. We had found a good place to stay in the old city and we really enjoyed it here. We found the most amazing restaurant with basic but fabulous Greek food.

Our room was supposed to be 2,500 years old. I'm not sure about that but yes, it was pretty old. Unfortunately you can't see much of it in this photo but we loved the 4-poster bed!