With another
early-morning departure looming, the last-minute packing and cleaning
once more kept us awake until far too late – this time we got to
bed around midnight for a 3am wake-up call. But we were on the road
by 3.30am and in Ermoupolis not long after – with plenty of time to
spare to get on our 4.20am ferry to Piraeus. Which was a good thing.
We've become used to catching the ferries to and from Normandy, which
are very well organised – check in here, queue there and wait for
someone to guide you onto the ferry. In Greece it's a little
different. No signs, no people, no idea. So we drove to and fro for a
while, asking people who hadn't a clue where we were supposed to be and
what we were supposed to do until the friendly lady in the ticket
office directed us back to where we had been at the start.
The ferry duly
arrived and we duly drove the car on and then trudged around looking
for somewhere to rest our weary heads. As Syros was the final stop on
a long journey through the Greek islands, space was at a premium, but
just as we were about to give up all hope, we miraculously managed to find two sets of four seats around two
adjacent tables, enabling us all to curl up and catch a few Zs. Kate did
the best, sleeping for much of the four-hour crossing, which was a good thing, as she had the driving
ahead of her. I woke pretty early and spent the last hour or so beginning the impossible task of removing all of the cat hair
from my fleece.
As we were one of
the last cars on, we were due to be one of the first off, but when
the time came to return to our vehicle, Kate and I realised that we
hadn't paid any attention to where the car actually was. Luckily Zoe
was on the ball and directed us to the correct level.
Now, over the past
few weeks, I've been trying to arrange a press trip/commission for a
story about a five-star resort called Costa Navarino in the
Peloponnese. It all came down to the wire, but I managed to pull it
together in the end, and it was there that we now headed. As
previously, we drove through some very dramatic landscapes on the way there. I hadn't
really appreciated just how spectacular a lot of Greece is – and it
was frustrating to have to try to catch these incredible scenes
through the window as we sped past them.
As we approached our
destination it was nearing lunch time, so we stopped off for a bite
in a little taverna by the water. We then headed for the resort, but we had one more stop to make before we got there. It turns out that in Greek 'zoe' means 'life', and on the way to Costa Navarino, we passed Hotel Zoe, which had her name spelled out in great big letters out the front - so of course we had to get a photo.
When we reached the resort, we were stopped by a guard at the gate. Luckily, my name was on
the guest list and we were ushered through into another world.
Pulling up in front of the hotel itself, we were greeted by name and asked
if we would like the valet to park our car. We declined, but by the time we had
done so ourselves, a buggy was waiting to ferry us and our
bags back to the front desk.
From then on, the
girls had permanently bugged eyes, as we were escorted to our luxury
suite, with its two enormous tvs, one of which was set above the
jacuzzi at the bottom of our bed, which looked out over the golf
course to the ocean. Their eyes then achieved a whole new level of bugged-ness as
they ran back in from the deck to report that they had spotted a
guest in a room below enjoying his infinity pool sans swimming
trunks. Kate took them off for a swim of their own in one of the
resort's two indoor pools while I had a quick nap, then we all had a
lovely buffet dinner in one of the restaurants.
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