This morning I was supposed to get up very early (about 5.30 am), load up the car and do a carboot sale near Leeds Bradford Airport, but when I finally woke up my phone said 9.40 am which was far too late. I got up (eventually) and then headed over to my friend Hayley's house for a day of stitching and crafting. On the way I picked up an apple pie milkshake and a pineapple, strawberry and cherry smoothie from Shaky Jakes, some Bakewell Tart from Costellos and some porridge with raisins from Love Rouge Bakery strangely served to take out in a coffee cup. All of these things were yummy (although can't personally comment on the milkshake because that was for Hayley as part payment for personal stitching tuition.) I first met Hayley at Buns & Roses which is an amazing WI Group based in Leeds City Centre (I might be slightly biased now as I'm on the committee, but I do believe it's awesome). I was very disappointed that I couldn't go along to one of the workshops in August which was called Night of the Living Thread and the blog post is here if you want to read about it. Hayley very kindly offered to teach me and so I took up far too much of her Sunday learning how to do some English Paper Patchworking, Fussy Cutting, Blanket Stitch as well as lots of other hints and tips like how to sew on sequins and spray paint fabric. In between stitching, Hayley and Flower also introduced me to Moto GP (apologies Hayley if it wasn't, but I think this is what it was called) which I found far more interesting to watch than usual car racing. The riders go around corners with their knees literally on the floor to take the corner as tightly as possible - this is not something that I have ever seen before! Anyway, I've not yet finished my stitching project, but here it is as a work in progress - Hayley is going to help me stretch it over a canvas when I've finished it. It's very orange, neon and covered with owls and skulls. Thanks Hayley for all your help - I had a really lovely day.
I've had a lovely evening this evening. First of all I finished work at 5.30 pm which is the earliest I've managed for weeks and went downstairs to The Roast for a quick glass of red wine to celebrate a very positive quarter with the team and the end of the week. I've been so busy with work, Guides, WI and life in general that I've not had much of a chance to blog.
I then hot footed across the city centre to meet my friend Zoe for dinner in the pouring rain (my tactic of walk quickly and you won't get wet didn't work very well!). She had recommended that we eat at Safran on Kirkgate opposite the Duck & Drake Pub. Safran was really not at all pretentious in décor whilst being quite opulent at the same time. This would seem to be an oxymoron (love that word!), but it had huge wall murals and chairs with flowery upholstery with gold thread running through it. Zoe recommended a mixed starter which was HUGE and we also had some lamb kebabs. The starter came with two massive naan type breads which were tasty and really light and we dipped into hummus, aubergine dip, tzatziki type dip, a pea and potato salad and another dip that was green and tasty, but I can't remember what it was called!
I also had some Turkish Coffee and both of us had a glass of red wine. The bill came to only £29 for both of us which was amazing and the service was friendly, prompt and efficient. I would highly recommend Safran and Persian food makes a nice change.
We then walked over quickly to West Yorkshire Playhouse to see Guys and Dolls. It's the first time that I've been to the Playhouse (to watch a play - I interview candidates at the canteen there a lot!) probably for about 6/7 years. I think that the last play that I saw there was either Johnson over Jordon (which was amazing) or a production by the same people that did Guys and Dolls Leeds Amateur Operatic Society of Jesus Christ Superstar which one of our friends was in I think back in 2005.
Now my expectations were low - I don't tend to like musicals and I've never heard much about Guys and Dolls so hadn't an awareness of the plot, songs or characters. However, I was pleasantly surprised. The plot was easy to follow (I'm terrible with musicals as I don't listen to lyrics in songs first, I listen to the music which makes it hard for me to follow plot if there is too much song in a musical), the acting for an amateur production was good and the singing was pretty decent too. The costumes were a bit hit and miss, but it was certainly a colourful spectacle and amazingly I didn't fall asleep! I have a massive problem with falling asleep if watching cinema or theatre when in a darkened room! Helen managed to make a small faux pas in recognising the guy playing Sky Masterson who had slagged off one of her friends previously at Ok Karaoke and commenting on this to us. Unfortunately for Helen, some of his friends were sat directly in the row behind us - slightly awkward (they moved to another row after the interval).
Going to the theatre for the first time in ages then reminded me of one of my first theatre trips when I really was a 90s teenager. I went with my all girls school - Tiffin Girls School to see Dreams of Anne Frank in 1992. Going to an all girls school and being only 12 years old somewhat limited the opportunity to meet boys and so trips out were a thing to relish the chances of seeing members of the opposite (and usually more immature) sex. On this particular occasion, it wasn't so much the other schools watching the play that we were interested in, but the actor playing the part of - for want of a better description - Anne Frank's boyfriend - who was called Tim Matthews and was a whole 4 years older than us.
After we'd seen the play, conferred amongst ourselves we decided that we quite liked him and one of my particularly bold and resourceful friends found the number for the Polka Theatre from the phone book (this was B.G. - Before Google) and one lunch time four of us crowded around the pay phone in the school entrance hall and dialled the number. Amazingly someone naive or stupid put us through to this 16 year old actor and we giggled and chatted at him for as long as our 10ps would allow passing the phone back and forth to each other. We did this on several occasions until close to when the play was finishing up and he then gave us his home phone number and we would ring him there and either speak to him, or chat away to his very accommodating Mum. I have to point out that I was not the ring leader in this slightly scary stalking, but it did make lunchtimes a bit more amusing. Tim I don't think ever quite hit the big time, although I was very excited when I spotted him on an episode of my now favourite ever crime drama The Bill. It's strange the effect going to an all girls school has on your perception of the male species during your "formative" years. I think that this was definitely good training for a later crush and obsession with Take That the following year...
Now, in no way do I think I'm totally unique in my clumsy and sometimes unfortunate nature, but I do have a fair few "It could only happen to me" type tales that I remembered last night after adding to the list with my latest escapade.
GYM Last night I had possibly the most embarrassing experience of my life! I'd gone to the gym for a Saturday evening workout at Virgin. I'd run a nice fast 5K in under 26 minutes and so headed back to my locker to get showered and changed before the gym shut at 9pm. I'm not sure how I managed it, but I accidentally changed the combination on my padlock after throwing my dirty clothes and for some reason my towel into the locker. I guess I must have been tired as I was left outside my locker, unable to open it with nothing but my glasses, a bottle of shampoo and for some reason my phone! The gym was due to shut in 15 minutes and so I was stood contemplating whether it was possible to wrench off the locker door whilst naked to get to my clothes and towel or having to speak to someone whilst wearing absolutely no clothes and ask for their help!
There was only one other lady in the changing room, so naked I walked over and asked if I could perhaps borrow a towel and ask for someone to help. I was so grateful that instead this lovely lady went out to the gym floor in her towel to get someone to chop off my padlock before the gym closed! Never had to ask a stranger for a favour before whilst being completely stark naked! Whilst waiting for the bolt cutters, I did manage to pull out my towel that was poking out the bottom of the locker so my dignity was somewhat preserved when the lady chopped off my padlock. (Strangely she did declare that the exact same thing had happened to her...)
TRAIN
Back in January 2010 I had taken the train from Leeds to York to visit a client for work. It was very snowy and so some of the trains to get back from York to Leeds were slightly delayed. I looked for the next train back on the boards and it stated that it was the delayed London Kings Cross Train calling at Leeds departing from platform 3. I walked over to platform 3 and the train to Kings Cross pulled up and I got on and sat down.
The nasal announcement came over the speaker as the train pulled out of the station "Welcome to passengers joining us at York this is the Grand Central train to London Kings Cross calling at London Kings Cross" it was a couple of seconds before the reality set in - I had got on a non stop train to London! I managed to find a very helpful lady who wasn't a guard, but found one for me although disappointingly told me "It's like a flight, once it's started we can't stop" (I did debate for about 10 minutes timing pulling the emergency chord to stop near a station - £500 might have just felt worth it!) The guard was very helpful and said that if I stayed with him when the train reached Kings Cross he'd make sure I could get back on the return train and wouldn't charge me for a ticket (which could have been over £100!) Fortunately I had my phone and this to read and keep me entertained (whilst being very angry and irritated at myself and the situation)
I eventually got back into Leeds at 7.30pm - it had taken me over 6 hours to do a 25 minute train journey!
BLACK EYE
So this is from ages ago, I was in Turkey on holiday with my friend Philippa back in August 2000 and I was completely sober on what had been quite a boozy holiday. I'd just got out of the shower and managed to somehow turn around to pick something off the floor and walk into a wall. I gave myself a very black eye which went from blue, to purple to yellow across the course of a week. During the day it was easy to hid behind sun glasses, but when it was the evening, I had to put masses amounts of eye-shadow over it to cover it up - I looked very strange.
CAMP-FIRE
When I was 17 I was in Venture Scouts with a lot of my friends. We'd gone camping one weekend and it was cold so a camp-fire was a necessity. We were packing up to go home and needed to put out the fire. I'd used up all the water and the water tap was a fair distance away so I decided to stamp out the embers with my walking boots - forgetting that we had burnt a number of items including pallets and chairs! A sharp sting went through my foot and I realised I'd stood on a nail! I sat down and proceeded to remove the nail with my hands, burning my fingers on the hot metal in the process. My friends had realised what was going on at this point and got me some water to cool down the burns. The huge hole in my foot had been cauterised so wasn't bleeding, but it had damaged some of my nerves so I couldn't walk on it. My ingenious friends put me in a wheelbarrow, wheeled me to the car park and then eventually took me to A&E. My two memories of A&E are being given crutches to help me walk around (harder than it looks) and a chav couple, the girl wandering over to me asking if I could help her find her horribly long fake blue and yellow painted finger nail. Morale of the story - don't stamp out fires with walking boots if you have been burning anything with nails in! It still feels weird to this day when I poke the scar.
CLUMSY GENES
I think that my inherent clumsiness comes from my Dad. I have many examples, but probably my favourite is when he was helping me move into our new house and he was putting some folded up boxes behind one of these chairs (Picture isn't mine, but this type of chair):
My Mum heard a crash and went to investigate and all she could see was him face down behind the chair with his legs straight up in the air! I have no idea how he managed it.
As my husband says to me every time I do a "clumsy" "It's like Keith Rider is in the room!"
One of the things that I most love, but also find most upsetting when visiting places like Pefkos this year or Side, Turkey last year; are the gorgeously cute cats that are borderline or fully feral / stray.
Before we flew out, my brother-in-law was suggesting that we should bring cat food with us, at first I was resistant, however, actually having spent 10 days in the company of some lovely (but very skinny) cats I think that maybe on reflection I would bring out food if I were to go again.
We met many cats across the course of our 10 day holiday and as they probably don't have owners to remember them, I would like to share their stories (and pictures) with the internet because if there is one thing that the internet needs it's MORE CATS!
The first cat that we met was at 8.30am the morning after arriving to our hotel at 4.30am. Brother-in-law woke us up for breakfast and bleary eyed I opened the door to be greeted by several people and this lovely lady that had already been named "Princess" by Brother in Law and Sister in Law (pictured here distracting husband from his reading).
This lady had a very small face, skinny legs and a huge belly and we think was quite heavily pregnant. She was very friendly and so I was able to stroke her and tried to feel if I could gently detect any babies moving in her belly, but I couldn't feel anything (mostly I think because she was purring too hard!). She liked anything we offered her to eat which ranged from ham, a very small ash tray (clean) of milk to James Wellbeloved which was imported by Brother in Law especially for the Greek cats. (She must be Greek as she even stole some Feta!
We think that the father of Princess's babies was this chap on the right. I think he is quite the lothario, as we saw him on our walk to Anixis for dinner with a whole host of other kittens and lady cats! We didn't actually name him, although Lothario might be appropriate?
Of course when you go out to eat (As I mentioned in my previous blog post about Food), you can't escape the pitiful and hungry eyes of cats and kittens asking for some food. Here are some the cats we met at the restaurants.
This lady cat had the biggest and most scared looking eyes of any cat that I've ever seen, she was hanging out just next to Artemis and she wouldn't come for a stroke, but was pleased when we gave her a few morsels of lovely food.
This cat made me especially sad. We met him on our last night in Pefkos at Georges and the waiting staff every other minute were chasing him and his friends away from our table (we really didn't mind, but I think that the staff did as obviously not everyone is as cat mad as we are so we had to do it very discreetly)
He made me sad for two reasons. Firstly he is the spitting image of our beautiful Stipey cat (below) who unfortunately went for a wander in November 2009 and hasn't come back yet and we still miss loads.
And secondly, the Greek Stipey had obviously seriously injured and broken his back leg and it had healed completely twisted and facing the wrong way. It didn't seem to phase him too much and he was happy to pester us for as much food as possible, but he looked very twisted up.
This picture makes me a bit happier - it shows the total kitty disrespect for the Greek ruins at the Acropolis in Lindos - they are all asleep on it!
This cat was also at the Acropolis and was very interested in getting into my Mother in law's bag and enjoyed eating some cheese biscuits.
These two were both in the car park in Lindos, the first one was a bit mangey looking and made me feel guilty for not taking her photo - so I did and here she is looking a bit strange. The second boy cat has clearly staked his claim on a very dusty vintage open top car.
The next day we visited Rhodes Old town and met a couple more kitties. The first one is hanging out around the bins near the Street of the Knights, if you look carefully there is another one asleep behind the bins. The second one stole some cheese from my Mother in Law (she was offering it in his general direction) and on the way back made himself look pretty with a flower. The bottom one is protecting a can of tuna with his tail whilst sleeping next to where they have the Sound and Light Show.
On the main street of Pefkos is an open field and at night there are at least 10 cats on the wall begging for food from passers by. We came across quite a few people feeding the cats tins of cat food which seemed to be much appreciated by the cats.
Below is a more plastic version of a Greek cat that I met...and purchased :-) During our holiday there were several people who came up to us and put lighters, and other bits of tat on our tables with a card saying something like "I'm deaf and would like to speak with you, but I can't so please take a look at my wares and buy if you like, this is how I make my living" As you can see, I had been drinking a few cocktails, so I was easier to convince!
As I've been writing this blog, I've been searching for other articles about stray cats in Greece and have come across a couple of charities - Friends of the Strays of Greece and The Greek Cat Welfare Society. These charities both seem to try and help the strays by neutering, administering veterinary treatment, trying re-home and generally raising money for Greek cats.
I also came across this rather upsetting article on my most detested "newspaper" The Daily Fail (and as much as I hate giving them ad revenue, I did think that it was necessary to comment on this article - don't read if you get upset by articles about animal cruelty)
I'm now not sure whether feeding strays is a good or bad idea and a lot of cat haters seem to put out a lot of negative comments on this topic. The only sensible advice I've found seems to be here at Nine Lives Greece who have some dos and don't's for dealing with stray cats.
If anyone knows of the best way to help Greek cats, I would be interested in hearing more.
I was back in work this morning after precisely 7.5 working days out of the office. I've recently been promoted and so am now the happy recipient of a Blackberry which I have to say really does help me manage my emails on a day to day basis. I don't think I'm a particularly important person, but I do receive an infeasibly large amount of emails on a daily basis - an estimate would be c100 - 200. A lot of these are emails that I'm cc'ed into and can delete more or less immediately, but a fair few more require a response or for me to make a note of the information that they contain. To make sure that my workload was covered whilst I was in Pefkos, I forwarded my emails to one of my colleagues and set up my out of office to do this. For some reason it didn't work immediately so I also created a rule which still didn't work and then our IT Support function set up a divert at their end. This ended up in at one point my poor suffering colleague receiving each of my emails 3 times over! Eventually this was rectified, but she breathed a huge sigh of relief when I walked back into the office this morning "I don't know how you do it!" she exclaimed. Perhaps I'm being hard on myself, but I think my email management leaves a lot of room for improvement. I have fairly bad hoarding tendencies (although not as bad as Richard Wallace - I watched the update on his story yesterday and yes I will be doing more de-cluttering and a car boot sale this weekend!) and I think this feeds into my treatment of emails. Despite having an amazing (and slightly scary) archive manager which essentially means any email I've ever received or sent since I joined my company in 2008 is retrievable within seconds, I am a bit of an email hoarder and I won't delete or move anything out of my inbox until I've dealt with it. I set myself targets of having no more than 20 emails in my inbox at any point in time, but probably the best I've managed recently has been about 40. I tell myself that there must be a better way to manage emails, but I'm yet to have found an easy to implement solution - so I've just run a quick Google search for inspiration and come up with a couple of articles. This article from Leadership and Community has a few quick and easy suggestions such as:
Turn off the new mail alert indicator (Quick and Easy but a Big Impact) - I've pretty much done this - at least I've turned off the profile view of the email, maybe something I should revisit?
Check your email only 3 times a day - nice idea, but I work in recruitment - if I only check 3 times and I am even a few minutes behind seeing an email from a client with a job that hasn't just gone to me, but also my competitors, I'm going to be at a massive disadvantage - not practical for me.
Empty your inbox at least once a day - Now this one *is* a good idea, I think that what my strategy will be over the next week will be to clear my emails from that day and make sure that I'm making a solid dent in the ones that have been lurking for a bit too long and that have accumulated over my holidays.
This article from Dumb Little Man (!) has a few more suggestions, although very similar vein of thought as the previous article, although I did like
Delete Ruthlessly: You can easily conclude from the subject line of an email if it's worth reading. If it isn't, delete it without thinking twice. If you slack, thinking that you probably might read it later, then believe me, that email will remain there as unread until you finally decide to do away with it. Act upon the email the first time you see it by either responding immediately, deleting it, or setting it as a task to accomplish at a specific time.
What is quite interesting is that whilst there are a lot of articles about email management, they all focus more on the technical management, rather than addressing some of the underlying issues which would help people a lot more with time management and work in general. Here are a few ideas that I've found useful:
If you get an email from a colleague - pick up the phone or walk over to them and talk to them, more often a 2 minute phone call/conversation will resolve a query quicker than several back and forth emails. Also this is much better for building your internal networks.
However, if like me you end up being a bit too helpful at times to the detriment of your own work here is another useful tip - if you get a question emailed from a colleague that you know there is an answer they could find from another source i.e. the intranet, a web search or even asking someone else - delay your response by 30 minutes or so (unless it's clearly critically urgent!) and fire a quick reply along the lines of "Sorry, just read your email, do you still need my help?" There is a good chance they've already found their own answer.
I need to read a lot of industry related newsletters to keep up to date with what is going on in my sector, I subscribe to a lot and they don't always arrive at sensible times to read, so you can either - dedicate a specific time i.e. lunch or at a quieter moment of the day to read them all or forward them onto a specific folder or different email address for reading at home. You can also set up automatic rules to manage these types of emails so that they don't even distract you in your inbox.
Email is very immediate - in days gone by you would receive all your post in the morning and have to prioritise which pieces to respond to first, email comes when it comes and often we feel compelled to answer it, even though there may be other things that are more deserving our our attention. I try and apply the Urgent & Important Matrix theory (although again I'm often drawn into the trap of considering email as "urgent an important" when actually it's probably less urgent than I initially think) (This matrix is from JISC Infonet although I'm not sure where the original idea is from.)
Of course one other school of thought is the One Touch rule, but I just don't think I can be that ruthless - does this actually work for anyone?
If anyone has any other secrets that they'd like to share that will help me - I'd be very pleased if you can let me know any "magic bullets" of email time management.
So all of this is very grown up, so to wrap up, here is a picture of one of the gorgeous cats that I met in Rhodes Old Town (It ate some cheese that my mother-in-law fed him earlier in the day.) A Greek cat post will likely follow at some point later this week...
One of the things that I most enjoy and look forward to about holidays is the food. I love food at the best of times and eat out often when back at home, so when on holiday I love to explore different foods and eat as much authentic food of the country that we're visiting. In fact my most frustrating holiday experience was probably when I visited Mallorca in 2003 and we went for allocation on arrival accommodation and ended up at Alcudia Pins which was basically Butlins in a hotter country - there was not a single place that we managed to find serving anything remotely Spanish! (OK we found paella that was pre-made and microwaved in front of us) In fact one of our favourite overheard quotes from the holiday was from a British Dad on the bus into the Port of Alcudia "Right kids, we'll have a quick look round town and then off to find a nice British Pub" It made me quite sad. My recent discovery of Forkly - an app which lets you do twitter length reviews of restaurant meals and drinks has been great fun (if a little interrupting of the flow of conversation across the dinner table) and I was pleased to be able to use it to track and remember some of the fantastic food that I enjoyed on holiday in Pefkos. Overall I was very impressed with the food on offer, I don't think I had a single bad meal and it was all pretty reasonably priced and I got the feeling that the restaurants whilst catering to the British palate (Pefkos did seem to have mostly British tourists on holiday) were very loyal to their Greek cuisine and history. You can see all my reviews on Forkly, but here are some overviews of the restaurants that we visited. Mary & Gina's Fish Taverna - This was our first evening meal in Pefkos, situated about half way down the main road that heads towards the beach. The menu was really broad, obviously there was a lot of fish, but also lots of Greek options and something that would suit most people. The waiting staff were very friendly and it was a pleasant restaurant surrounding, only a little disappointing that some of the nearby bars had such loud music it interfered with an otherwise very pleasant atmosphere. My favourite dish here was the Kataifi - a honey and nut sweet dessert with a shredded wheat type texture of pastry surrounding it - this is what it looks like (although not the ones I ate as it was too dark for a good photo by the time we got to dessert!) The link above also has a recipe that I might have to try out.
Nostalgia Restaurant, Palm Cocktail Bar & The Pool Bar - We spent a lot of time at these three places that are all part of Pefkos Beach Hotel which is where we were staying. Partly because of how close they all were to our room, but also because there was free Wi Fi and the food and drinks were also very good. The service here was excellent, the staff are friendly without being intrusive, get the British sense of humour and are also very attentive. It's a great central location just at the top of the road that runs to the beach and on the Main Street in Pefkos. We were out in Pefkos for my brother in law's wedding and he had the reception dinner at Nostalgia which was gorgeous - I had the Lamb Greco which was beautifully tender and the starters were a selection of very tasty Greek Salads and filled potato skins with Wedding Cake for dessert. We also went en masse (About 15 of us) for a group meal later in the week and again the food was great - I had mushrooms stuffed with seafood for starters, Beef Nostalgia for my main and Chocolate Trap for dessert - all reviewed on Forkly, but here is a picture of the Beef Nostalgia to whet your appetite.
We had many different fruity cocktails from the Palm Cocktail Bar over the course of the 10 days that we were there, again many of which I've reviewed, but my favourite is probably the Strawberry Daiquiri
The Pool Bar was great for snacks and drinks and I had far too many calorific Iced Coffees with Ice Cream and also a couple of extremely tasty and entirely home made "Village Pizzas" which were made from scratch pizzas (including the dough) with onion, tomato, olives, peppers, feta and cheddar cheese - delicious!
Anixis Restaurant - situated a little further along from the main thrust of bars and restaurants on the main road it was a nice quiet setting with a lovely view out across the bay to the sea. The staff were incredibly friendly and welcoming and had possibly the tallest waiter I've ever met (at least 6 foot 7 inches tall! I had a Greek Plate to share as my starter and it was huge! We don't look impressed in this picture (taken by Lucien), but it's more incredulity at the sheer size of our starter we were about to undertake!
It would have easily shared for 4 people, but was delicious. If I'd have realised quite how large the portions were I probably wouldn't have gone for 2 starters as my main course and I chose a seafood risotto and chefs salad (tomato, cucumber, lettuce, onion, boiled egg, olives, slices of cheese and ham and marie rose sauce) They were both very tasty, but I probably only managed not even half of them. Artemis Restaurant - Located very much amongst the main throng of bars and restaurants this had a pleasant and calm atmosphere and beautiful plants and trees that helped it live up to it's billing as a "garden restaurant". We had a mixed Mezze to start (Dolmades, baked butter beans, Meatballs, Tzatziki) and then I went for the Pefkos Lamb which was beautifully cooked with figs and honey and then for dessert I had the Dark and White chocolate Ganache which was beautiful and extremely rich, but made me so full I could barely move!
Spitaki - This very much felt like a traditional Greek Taverna, and one of the buildings that make up the restaurant has been there since 1913 and is one of the oldest in Pefkos. Located again in the main throng of restaurants, but wasn't impinged on by loud bars nearby. We weren't so hungry when we went here so went for main course and dessert only accompanied (accidentally) by the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu which was also lovely. The waiting staff were again very welcoming and possibly even more attentive because of the local Rhodian wine I bought (which actually was only equivalent of £17). I went for the Poseidon fish platter which was very tasty and very filling. (There were also lots of gorgeous cats around keen to entertain us for scraps which I don't think the waiting staff were pleased with us accommodating!)
Tsambikos - This was probably my favourite restaurant of all that we visited. A brief climb up a hill past the taxi rank meant that this restaurant can justifiably claim to have the best view in Pefkos across the bay. The food was beautiful - we had Cheese Saganaki and Mixed Hot Starters as well as an additional pre-starter of breads and dips from the fantastic bakery attached to the restaurant (you have to try their Croissants which are amazing and only 1 euro each - great for breakfast). For my main I had lamb again which was beautifully tender and for desserts we had Baklava and the strongest ever Irish Coffees! We were also given a aperitif which was a pepper-minty drink apparently to aid digestion. Please visit the bakery even if you don't go for a full meal as the pastries here are fantastic - here is the Baklava that we enjoyed.
Zorbas - So we were intrigued by the offer of a 3 course meal for €7.90 which is more like the price of a starter in one of the other places we'd been during the week. Zorbas is located down a number of steps just opposite from the taxi rank. During our meal they had a CD playing with 5 different Greek pieces of music including (as you would expect) Zorba's dance. The CD stuck on several occasions and we heard it all the way through I think 3 times whilst we were there! Our expectations weren't high and whilst the food wasn't as good as we'd grown used to over the week, it was perfectly edible and the staff were friendly if a little manic and confused! We had a Mezze to start which would appear to be some stewed vegetables possibly served with Duck, and for my main again I had the Lamb - think Sunday lunch, only with tender Greek lamb & artichoke. It was served with lemon sauce which was more like gravy, but tasty, perhaps a bit too hearty for the climate? Baklava for dessert was pretty tasty - no complaints. If you are on a budget, this is great, but if you can stretch your wallet a bit more, you will probably enjoy better food in other restaurants, but it very much did what it professed to and was a tasty meal.
Hellas - Hellas is the number one recommended restaurant on Trip Advisor in Pefkos, and whilst we did enjoy our food, it was really busy, so service was fairly limited (we did well to get in though in fairness as several people were turned away and it was clearly very popular). We had the Feta Cheese with sesame seeds and honey for starter which had been recommended by family and it was very tasty and unusual - crispy, sweet and sour. However, a portion could happily feed 2 people so you might want to consider sharing. For my main I went for the Greek pasta with prawns and it was unusual and quite tasty although would have benefited from more seasoning and the prawns hadn't been de-veined or shelled which I'm never that keen on. The surroundings were gorgeous - trees with fruit on, varnished shiny stone floor, so I can see why it's a popular venue for weddings. I liked it here, but it wasn't my number one restaurant of the holiday. (Again there were lots of very cute cats around for us to enjoy looking at)
Georges - This was also recommended to us by family and friends and can be apparently hard to get into, although we found it really quiet when we arrived. The service wasn't as attentive as some places we'd been to, but the waiting staff were pleasant enough. I went for stuffed mushrooms for my starter which was lovely and my husband had some tasty Dolmades. For my main I went for a mixed Greek plate to end the week as I'd started and my husband went for Swordfish which he'd only discovered on this holiday and really likes. The food was tasty, but not as good as some that we'd had earlier on in the week - in particular the filling of my stuffed tomato tasted quite odd and so I fed it to the cats. The presence of very adorable and insistent cats playing (excuse the pun!) cat and mouse with the waiting staff more than made up for the slightly disappointing food. It was a nice meal to send us on our way back to the UK.
Some general food observations from my 10 days in Pefkos:
Wine is confusing! - in England you generally only get the question "dry, sweet or medium" when you are drinking white wine, in Greece this also applies to Red. If you go for medium or sweet, you'll get something similar to a port or sherry, so opt for dry if you want something more like a Merlot or Rioja.
Vegetarians are something of an afterthought, there are some restaurants with a "Vegetarian" selection on their menus, but often this comprises of just 4 dishes. There are quite a few things that can be suitable for veggies, but a lot of Greek food is heavily based around meat and fish. I think most restaurants would try and accommodate any requests and a lot of the menus did specify which oils they cooked their food in. Pescetarians would be fine as there are lots of fish and seafood options.
Despite being on an island and with many restaurants only 100m from the beach, most of the seafood and fish seems to be frozen (which they are honest enough to put on the menu), it was all very tasty, but a bit disappointing that there were not more fresh fish dishes.
The variety of food on the menus can sometimes be overwhelming, but I don't think you'd be disappointed - one tip, if you like reading menus after you've chosen the waiting staff will leave you alone! To signify that you are ready to order, everyone on the table needs to close their menus.
So that was 10 days away from work on holiday staying at Pefkos Beach Hotel to attend the wedding of my Brother in Law at St Pauls Bay which was incredibly beautiful, but extremely hot.
I should be feeling very relaxed, but after checking out of our room at 12pm, we didn't get on our transfer coach until half midnight and when we arrived at Rhodes Airport we were told that our 4.50am flight was delayed by an hour! Husband managed to catch a few minutes sleep on the floor of Gate 13 and I stayed awake and read more of Lolita on my Iphone ready for Buns & Roses WI Book Club next Sunday at the most awesome Tiled Hall Cafe. I find that as much as I adore owning books and holding books and in particular the smell of a new book - I simply have too much stuff. So the ability to download books onto my phone is amazing, it means I'm never stuck anywhere and not able to read, and in particular when I'm reading and come across words like platitudes or fey I can just double tap and the built in dictionary tells me what the word means. This is clearly more appealing that lugging a copy of the OED around with me. We got on our flight finally and arrived back into Manchester Airport only 40 minutes later than scheduled. Picking up our bags and getting to the train station was pretty straightforward and we only had a 5 minute wait before getting on the train back to Leeds. (It is also worth mentioning that Manchester seems to have the friendliest airport staff of any airport that I've ever visited!). As we were leaving the airport, I started sneezing and haven't stopped all day! I now feel more tired than I did before we went away - so much for "relaxing holiday". Surely there is a better way to travel which doesn't involve so much waiting around, sleeping/sitting on floors of airports? And couldn't there be a better amount of thought put into airport design? Rather than metal seats that people lie across, when delays set in, why not provide reclining seats that people can sleep on and take up less room and be more comfortable (and less of a trip hazard!)? As I got off the plane I realised that I was sneezing, and since then I can't stop! I must have picked up a cold on the plane, I don't normally get ill so this is very unfortuante. I wisely booked tomorrow off as holiday to sort laundry and other dull post holiday stuff and I'm really glad that I did as I not only still have 14 days to take before the 31st of December this year, but also I'm exhausted! I need another holiday to recover (!), so I'm now considering options. I don't think that we'll be able to afford for both me and the husband to go away on holiday, so it might be a case that I go away by myself and either visit my amazing friend Rachel in Ubud in Bali which is a truly amazing and unique place, or I go shopping in New York with my also awesome friend Kate? Or maybe I could do both? I will probably bore you with a few more comments about my holiday, but in the meantime it's 2.30am in Greece and I'm still running on Greek time, so I'll leave you with two things that have made me happy recently - my manicured nails (this is only my 4th time in my life that I've had a manicure!) that I had done at RM UK by the lovely Georgia the day we flew out to Rhodes and my gorgeous Hell Bunny 50s style dress dress that I bought from eBay in a gamble that proved fruitful.
