Our hotel was a part of a water park which we thought the kids would love. However, when Josh booked the hotel we didn't know that our ferry wouldn't be til 4PM from Paxos (the ferry was only booked a few weeks ago) therefore, the water park part was already closed by the time we got to the hotel. Thankfully there was a nice pool!
Unfortunately, the hotel was also pretty far away from both the port and the airport... like a 45 minute drive. Whew knew this island was so big???? The taxi driver didn't speak English (which was fine, after all, we were in his country) but when he spoke he yelled. He also didn't turn on the meter and was driving like a maniac. And I thought the drivers in Barcelona were psychotic? No way, nothing compared to the Greeks I've experienced!!!
We drove along what I assume was the midlands of the island until we came to the north. With the exception of the port town, for 45 minutes we saw very little of anything other than trees and road. A few houses spotted here and there and no towns until we reached the end of our journey. Suffice it to say since he didn't turn on the meter at all and we were in the middle of the boonies and yeah I'll admit to knowing that Americans aren't the favorite people of the Greeks these days...that I worried for a few moments if we were perhaps being kidnapped.
However, towards the end when he made a few wrong turns and patted Josh on the back and said in his broken English (very loudly) "It all OK", I realized that he's just a quiet guy and that the island is just very sparce once you get out of the main city. Whew!!! But as we looked for the hotel in this beach town (which sprung up out of no where!), I was a little concerned since it looked all a bit run down. Did we really drive all this way for crap?
And there amongst the fields with the alpacas was our hotel. We had to drive along a windy dirt (path) road to get to it and I once again had concerns about what we had gotten ourselves into. But I was pleasantly surprised when we arrived and the hotel was fantastic! Clean, updated and most of all, exceptional service. They came right out to the cab and brought our bags in and then brought us right upstairs to our room. The kids immediately wanted to swim in the pool which we of course let them. We had some snacks by the pool and the kids swam til around 8:30.
Finally it was time to go upstairs and change so we could have some real food. Aidan slipped on the stairs going up and his head made some significant contact with the marble stairs resulting in a huge egg on his head. There were a few times during dinner where he didn't respond to us and all I could think of was where in the hell is the hospital from here and what if he has internal bleeding or a concussion??? Thankfully all was well and we had a very pleasant (though not super yummy) dinner before settling down early. After all, we had a 4AM wake up call and a 4:30AM taxi waiting for us in the morning to take us back to reality. And reality bites :(
Josh still has one more week left of vacation and we'll make the most of it while at the same time getting the kids back in to some routines since school starts at the end of next week. We don't have any plans in particular other than to catch up on some sleep (though we were both up by 6 this morning!) and take care of things around the house, such as the 50 loads of laundry we brought back with us! Perhaps we'll even make an attempt to start talking about our next vacations we need to plan! Regardless, this has been a summer and a VistaBreak to remember!!
Julie
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