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| In Fiskardo |
Seven days of sunshine, blue sky and blue sea... but now we are home. We enjoyed our first visit to Kefalonia. The hotel was in an isolated rural location with a lovely swimming pool. We were on a "half board" deal with breakfast and evening meal included.
The food was okay - some hits and some misses - certainly not as good as the fayre we enjoyed in Crete last year but perfectly acceptable. To accompany each evening meal we ordered a carafe of white wine and we got to meet some of the other hotel guests. They were mainly English with a sprinkling of Italians, Greeks and Dutch.
Around the pool there were not enough sunbeds to cope with demand and I noticed that some guests were in the habit of claiming sunbeds before breakfast by draping towels over them. This has got to be one of the most selfish and anti-social holiday habits known to humankind.
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| Roadside shrine near Assis |
When our children were young we once went on holiday to Minorca and in our holiday complex some guests even claimed sunbeds the night before the sunny day ahead. On the day we left, our hotel pick up time was four in the morning. Before departing, I gathered up all the towels that had been draped on the sunbeds - around thirty towels in total. Then I went round to the games room pool table and carefully piled all the towels up there - one spread on top of the other. How I would have loved to watch the confusion and annoyance that this must have caused a few hours later but by then we were high above The Bay of Biscay, flying home.
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| Belltower in Kouroklata |
In Kefalonia we had a hire car for three days and travelled around the island - to Assis, Fiskardo, Lixouri, Skala and the capital - Argostoli. A lot of hairpin bends and hill climbs but the asphalt was usually pretty good. We saw some tremendous views but I didn't spot a single old man with a donkey. Perhaps those weatherbeaten old men with their stubborn animals have all gone now. They used to be such a feature of rural Greece and where were the old women in black with beautifully wrinkled faces, counting worry beads in the shade of old fig trees? I guess they are gone too for the world has moved on - even in ancient Greece - and when the old pass away they may not be replicated.
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| Shirley at Assis - west coast of Kefalonia |
You mean to tell me I won't see donkeys and fishermen in small boats? Bummer. I'd be right with you in moving and hiding those towels.
ReplyDeleteDonkeys in fishing boats? Now that would be a sight to see Red! Perhaps they would be wearing sailor hats with holes for the ears.
DeleteYears ago we experienced the towel thing on Hayman Island, one of our Great Barrier reef resorts. Not nice, and usually practised by a certain type of tourist but after a while of missing out because of it you usually have to join in. Great departing trick, I bet it causes an uproar!!
ReplyDeleteI would never follow the bad example Helen but I might move somebody's towels and then wait for the row, knowing I was in the right.
DeleteMany years ago we were on holiday in Gran Canaria, staying in an apartment complex. Just as it was getting light one morning, I could hear a commotion outside in the garden. Being on the ground floor, I popped onto our terrace to have a look. Two coaches had just arrived, bringing holiday makers from the airport. Whilst one half of a couple went in to register, the second member went to the swimming pool, and taking two towels from his/her flight bag, proceeded to drape them across two sunbeds before going into the building. This had not gone un-noticed by other people in the apartments, so we quickly gathered up all the towels and dumped them in the swimming pool. The uproar the next morning was hilarious when the would-be sunbathers found that they had no-where to lie and had to claim their towels from a soggy mass dumped on the public footpath outside the complex ! I won't actually say where they came from, but, sorry, Librarian would have been mortified !
DeleteAnother blow for holiday justice! The world will never be free until we rid it of all selfish sunbed baggers... Certain countries would then be depopulated, making more room for refugees.
DeleteActually a good strategy to address the refugees crisis! I might suggest it to Frau Merkel next time I bump into her at Aldi's.
DeleteSome holiday makers would never leave home without packing their own personal meanness. Love the towel removal story.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the story with the clock tower?
Alphie
That clock tower is amazing isn't it? I can only imagine that it was toppled by the 2014 earthquake.
DeleteYay for giving all those towel jerks a figurative two finger salute as you left! :)
ReplyDeleteI'm glad your holiday was nice but sorry you missed seeing all the lovely picturesque old people.
I'm also glad you're back. Blog land felt a little lonely without good old YP around last week!
It's a shame the wi-fi was only usable near the hotel reception counter but yes now I am back I will be coming up with blogposts that are even more boring than usual! It is my mission to help bloggers to sleep.
DeleteI am relieved to read that you did not mention Germans as your fellow guests at the hotel, and yet the towel thing happened there, too. Up until now I was convinced that this truly bad, bad habit was entirely German - I've never practiced it myself (and would not dream of it!) but it's such a cliché about my co-nationals that I thought it must be true and nobody else does that.
ReplyDeleteThe bell tower looks as if there has been an earthquake at some stage.
I wonder whether the old people did enjoy being "picturesque" - it was a hard, sometimes very hard, life that made them look the way they did, and most elderly people will be glad they are not forced by the unspoken rules of their society to walk around in black clothes or with donkeys anymore. Instead they can dress as nicely (or not) as everyone else and whizz about in their cars like all the other people.
Old Greeks must pray to their new god in gratitude - The Holy European Union.
DeleteThe selfish towel habit may have been developed by Helmut Kohl but it has now spread to other nations like a plague. It certainly is a cliche to apportion blame to Germans in general. You get thoughtless people everywhere.
re.that belltower - there was an earthquake in 2014 and that may have toppled it.
Hahahaha! I would've loved to have seen the looks on faces of the guests the next morning after you removed their towels, too, Yorkie. If I'd been there I would've been happy to help you remove the towels! lol
ReplyDeleteIt looks like such a beautiful area...and I'm glad you had a nice time, but, I'm sure as always, it's also nice to be back home again. Good to have you back. :)
I am glad that I made you chortle Lee. I bet there were no problems with selfish sunbed claiming on Hinchinbrook Island. Any guilty tourists would have been sent to the resort manager's office for discipline.
DeleteNo...I just sent them off the island in a leaky canoe with a teaspoon as a paddle...and bid them bon voyage! ;)
DeleteLove the amazing blue skies and blue sea. Did you drink ouzo and eat kebabs?
ReplyDeleteNo ouzo for me Sue... I can still remember a lost ouzo night long ago on the island of Hydra. Lethal stuff.
DeleteIt all looks very beautiful. Love the towels story!!
ReplyDeleteI trust that you never reserved a sunbed Mrs Weaver... Do they have sunbeds in Mablethorpe?
DeleteGlad you both had a good time YP, and thank you for the lovely photos. Wouldn't mind a holiday there - it looks so beautiful and unspoiled.
ReplyDeleteCertainly not seething with tourists. It was easy to find some peace there and relatively unspoilt settlements.
DeleteI think the EU outlawed all those old men and women -- told them they had to modernize, buy a German car and some clothes from H&M! (I remember being on Naxos in 2000 and seeing old guys with donkeys.)
ReplyDeleteGood for you on the towels. I would love to have seen the scene the next morning as well.
Naxos? I have been there too but that was back in 1980. There were so many old men with donkeys that you couldn't walk down the street without bumping into them.
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