And, relax.....

Since my last posting, we left the lovely Ioaninna - a city in our opinion that is well worth the visit.

We then headed 3 hours east, to Larissa - Greece's 4th largest city.

We'd put our hotel's address into our GPS and when we arrived we kept getting directed down pedestrian streets. Having circled and tried several different routes I was about ready to throw the GPS out the window. The hotel website cited on site parking, how could it be in a pedestrianised area?

I parked up. left Milly and Claire in the car, and set off on foot - GPS unit in hand. It turned out the hotel was in the middle of the central town square - and it did indeed have parking. When I questioned how one might park, I was simply instructed to mount the pavement and drive slowly - only in Greece, ay?

For what we saw of Larissa, it was a lovely city - the central area is completely pedestrianised (other than people trying to find their hotels) and almost entirely made up of cafes and bars, which the Larissans sit around at drinking iced coffee, which appears to be the drink de jour in Greece so far.

The next day, we set off again for what was our final car journey before our first extended stop. The GPS (we're friends again) was telling me that it was 3 hours to the port in Athens, and we had 7 hours to get there - which meant we stopped a couple of times en route.

The drive itself was interesting, we ended up driving through the mountain pass where Leonardis and 300 Spartans died trying to hold off he Persian army - as immortalised in the Frank Miller comic 300.

We also stopped in a little coastal town who's name we did not catch (all the roadsigns are written in Greek, which has a different character set which I have not yet managed to master) - which was hosting a world rally championship race that day - the race of the gods apparently? lots of noisy cars and sweaty men tinkering with them - very exciting.

That evening, we approached athens at approximately 6:30pm, and inadvertently got caught up in rush hour traffic - which was like nothing I'd seen before - 3 lanes of chaotic traffic undulating, merging and swerving, whilst idiots on motorbikes with no helmets zigzagged through the cars.

When we finally reached the port I could not believe that we'd made it without a scratch, never again - or at least not for a couple of weeks.

The ferry ride was fairly uneventful - we sailed at 9pm and went to bed not long after that - to be rudely awoken at 5:30am when the ferry docked.

Our apartment is a 20minute drive from the ferry terminal - we'd arranged with the owner to collect the keys from George, the person who ran the taverna situated below the property.

When we arrived in Almyrida, George was not there - hardly surprising as it was 6:30am.

We spent the next hour and a half kicking a ball around on the beach, before making our way back to the apartment, collecting the key from George, and letting ourselves in.

One final car unpack, and we were here - it was a strange feeling, for the last two weeks - or even longer - we've been working hard at finishing work, or packing our house, or driving across Europe - it was a strange feeling not having anything that needed doing - it was finally time to relax.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach - I was pleased to see that there were other German and English visitors, so I wasn't the only translucent person trying to catch a tan - phew.

This evening, we've just put Milly to bed and I'm sat in the front room looking out the window at the Mediterranean wash in and out on the beach and the hubbub of the people in cafes and restaurants on the street.

I can feel the light tingle of sunburn on my skin, nothing particularly painful - just my body letting me know that I'm alive - and life is good.

It turns out that our two bedroom apartment is actually 2 one bedroom self contained units with a shared entranceway, so if anyone out there is at a loss for things to do in the next three weeks - come on over, one of the budget airlines flys to Chania, and from there I can pick you up in our car - life doesn't get much better than this, but don't take my word for it - find out for yourself.

Trip in numbers:

Miles since N15: 1986.8