I drove Mum & Dad to the beach today. We went to Λάμπες (Lambes) beach which is between the tourist resorts of Φοινικούντα (Finikounda) and Μεθώνη (Methoni).
Dad had managed to leave the chairs and beach mats in their car so we had sunbeds on the beach instead. In Greece the normal practice is that the sunbeds are free of charge if you buy food or drink from the café/bar nearby (they’ll often take your order at your sunbed and bring it out to you).
I had a couple of good swims at the beach – You have to walk a long way out to get to water deep enough for swimming though, it is shallow for a long distance and you can’t really swim in water which is only ankle deep!
Above: When Dad sent the photo of me standing next to my rental car to his work’s WhatsApp group, one of them replied to say “I’m sorry Jeff but Fred looks just like you”.
We stopped for a drink at a small village in the mountains on the way back, plus a quick stop at the big supermarket just down the road from where we’re staying (they have Marmite on the shelf….I’ve never seen Marmite in a supermarket abroad before!)
I finished reading my book today – Since April I have been reading Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, but as lockdown eased I kept finding things to do which meant I read it slowly. Today I finally finished it. When I read my next books I’ll try not to take so long – slow down my pace of life at the weekends back home a bit – now that I know international travel isn’t so bad during a pandemic, I can save up for my next trip abroad.
Above left: The Francisco apartments swimming pool. Above right: The sea view from Mum & Dad’s balcony, looking across to the Mani peninsular.
It was noticably quieter when we went out for dinner this evening; The tail end of the holiday season has arrived and a lot of people left over the weekend. There’s still a fair few tourists about – it’s not like the place is completely dead – and I’m reliably informed it is busier than it was last year.
I was reading in a Cypriot newspaper today that tourism in Greece this month is at 90% of the August 2019 level, compared to Cyprus where it is at 55% of the 2019 level – Cypriot tourism bosses say this is because the Cypriot authorities have been quite strict with testing on incoming tourists. This year 70% of arrivals in Cyprus have not been from Cyprus’ 3 main tourist markets (the UK, Greece and Russia). Across Greece and Cyprus, an increase of arrivals from Germany, the Netherlands, France and Italy have filled the gap while the Brits are still very reluctant to travel abroad.
I had a very nice chicken souvlaki for dinner this evening.
Looking forward to hopefully driving to Methoni tomorrow.
Καληνύχτα,
Φρεντ.
