Not hot heat

Well, we've made it to mainland Greece - hooray! It turns out the Greeks are revolting - literally! Albiet most of the protestations are occurring 300 miles away in Athens... if your not sure what I'm talking about, turn on the news!

Since my last blog post, we've left Trieste - we meant to stop in to Miramare Castle - but Milly fell asleep on route - so we decided to make the most of her slumber time and pushed on for our next destination - sorry Eugenio, next time!

Some four hours later we arrived at Camping Panoramico on Fiesole - just outside of Florence. This was a last minute change to our itinerary - as we'd originally planned to go through the Baltic states, but had a change of heart having read some grim stories of terrible roads and crime in Albania.

We'd actually stayed at this camp site in Fiesole once before, back in 2003 - and had said at the time that we'd like to come back at a later date with kids - and here we were, keeping true to our word.

We'd noticed the first time through that the camp site offered cabins, which were cheap and offered all the things that we look for in accommodation - EG have beds and somewhere to wash. Being a campsite, it also had bonus facilities that a normal hotel wouldn't - such as a laundry - which we made full use of!

We were booked in to stay in Fieole for two days, so we headed down to Florence on the second to remind ourselves of what it had to offer.

Having been here before, we had no burning desire (or money) to go to any of the museums, but we thought we'd just pop down and soak up the atmosphere - which we did, as well as leak money - it seems that your average Florentine (is that what you'd call someone from Florence?) is adept of separating stupid foreigners from their hard earned euros.

Having arrived back at the cabin that evening, we settled in to our dinner of bread and cheese - which has become a bit of a staple during this trip.

Over the course of the two days, we got to know the couple staying at the cabin next to us quite well - their names wer Balint and Nora, both from Budapest - funny, I thought my days of spending time with Hungarians were sadly now over - but it turns out this wasn't the case - they were very impressed with my Hungarian vocabulary: hi, thanks, and cheers! - non of which I can spell, so I won't bother here.

Having said goodbye to camping panoramico (we'll be back, again!) we set off towards Ancona and our ferry to Greece.

Another 4 hour drive, and we seem to have stumbled upon a pattern that is working for Milly - set off about 11, and she'll sleep for the first hour, then Mickey Mouse and Handy Manny for the next 90 minutes followed by a stop for lunch, and a final 90 minutes in the car - by the end of which she's just starting to grumble and we're reached our destination - hooray!

We jumped in the ferry, and after a small delay we were off! On the boat we bumped into a large group of elderly english gentleman wearing heavy metal tee-shirts. Having struck up a conversation with them it turned out that they were Iron Maidens roadies - who had set out in advance of the band playing in Athens in two nights time (the band flew separately).

The all seemed like nice guys and were impressed that we'd driven so far from London - having chatted to them I did wonder if I'd missed my true calling in life - I like wearing band tee-shirts, drinking beer, and plugging in musical equipment - maybe I should have been a roadie? maybe a career change I can think about upon arriving back in NZ.

That brings us to today, we were awoken at an unreasonable hour by a "hiya" from the wee one who must be obeyed, after an expensive breakfast of dry croissant and cold coffee we packed up our cabin and awaited being let back into the car to disembark.

Once back on the road, we had a short one hour drive to where we are now, Ioannina - which seems like a holiday resort, but one that is deserted at the moment due to it not being school holidays?

We checked into the hotel (with free WIFI - hooray!) and then headed out to explore the city - had lunch on the bank of lake Pamvotida (more bread and cheese) and took a boat ride out to the island in the middle of the lake - which was your stereotypical greek village, with small cobbled streets and white washed buildings - nice to be able to tick that box so early into the trip.

For a while now, I'd been concerned about the temperatures in Greece, specifically driving in them in our little car with no air conditioning - but so far all my fears seem unfounded - whilst it was quite warm when we arrived this morning, it wasn't anything that an open window couldn't handle - and this afternoon we've been subjected to torrential rain! which has certainly helped to cool things down a bit.

Everywhere we've been today, the news has been on the TV - today is a day of national strikes, and it seems there are major protests going on down in Athens - it doesn't seem that there's anything similar going on in Ioannina - other than locals watching what's happening on TV with interest - but it does make us feel pretty lucky to have arrived today, as apparently all the ports are closed?

This evening we decided to go out to a Greek taverna and treat ourselves to a meal that wasn't cheese and bread. We had a lovely dinner - greek salad, fried local cheese and courgettes, chicken souvlaki, and grilled trout - but you'll see by the picture above that Milly only had eyes for the chips! a girl after my own heart.

Trip in numbers so far:

Miles since n15: 1613.8

Length of beard: must be almost 2mm now? I've got no real way of measuring

Meals of cheese and bread since we left the UK: too many!