Well, that was the holiday then. A fantastic 168 hour long boozy lunch, we didn't do much more than get up for a big breakfast, sit snacking and drinking by the pool while waiting for our big boozy lunch, then eat and drink until it was time for a big dinner, then retire to the bar. Was great to have so many family members there, there were eighteen of us in all. It was very sad to leave them there for the second week, while we came home.
The resort1 was ace, very impressed with how lush and in bloom it all was, they have made a real effort with populating the place with flowers and that. We have learned a new name for a lovely thing, it's Bougainvillia, and if it's not too uncool to have a favourite flower, then that's it, the colours are ace and I hope that it features in some of our photos, and that we can grow some somewhere, somehow over here. And anyway, it's more a big creeping manly vine. Must have taken a lot of water to keep everything so nice and green, but then they save a bit by filling up the pools with what must havebeen sea water. Once you got outside the resort there was the dry dustiness I expected, but Hersonnisos itself was cool. It was early in their season, they were just getting ready for a huge influx, and a lot of it was fairly eighteen-thirty, but we found some nice places.
Lunches were all in, buffet style, a mix of healthy and less so... this is the first year that this resort had been marketed to the UK, so it was mostly made up of French and German guests, so when there was a canteen or two of something nice and simple and vegan like broccoli or beans, it was often sprinkled with chopped sausage, bacon, ham, or cheese. So most days I had chips, in a roll, with some nice salad things. Got a bit more of an overhanging belly now, that I must work on. Used some exercise kit while away that has inspired us to do more too.
Our one trip out was to the capital Heraklion, which has lots of cool shops and bars and things. Apparently it's expensive as Greece goes, but we didn't really notice this. Favourite place we went to was the very cool Living Room2, but there were the typical tacky joints too.
We went to Knossos too, there are remains of a palace there from between four and six thousand years ago, and they claim it had working sanitation and the like - so with all that experience, why can you still not put paper down the toilets now? It is likely to be that if it wasn't for "improvements" and renovations by the Victorians all would be cool for flushing as much folding as you like. The renovations done at Knossos were most confusing, when you first have a glance across the site, you see a few columns and standing walls with murals still in place, though it turns out these are concrete reproductions put in place by a chap called Sir Arthur Evans, to give an impression what the place would have looked like. It turns out these reproductions are starting to crumble now, and the archaelogists working there now are having to put serious effort into preserving / restoring them. Also some of the restoration was quite inaccurate, there's a bit of mural called "Prince of the lilies", looks like a man dancing through some flowers, but it turns out now that it's very likely to have originally been three different figures (one female, two male) that were forced together jigsaw style by the Victorians. Seeing things like this has given me the impression that the only things we know about ancient history are what the generations who came between then and now have left for us to know. What will later generations think of us, when all our DVDs and hard drives have degraded away, and there's not a surviving accurate record of we live? It could be that's all that survives from our generation are frivolous things like marble statues of Michael Jackson and the like.
Anyway, REALLY got into the archery, it was easier than I thought to get started, though I have a blister from using a bow that didn't quite fit my hand. Not sure if you're allowed to just buy this kit and use it in your garden, maybe we will see about joining a club.
This weekend, got to get a van and move some bits round from Clare's parents to the flat, hopefully this will go smoothly. Looking forward to moving a bagfull of symbolic househould items from Stokey to the Folkestone flat... not decided what yet, but it will be a few choice items that deserve the nice new surroundings, a lamp, some books. Apart from something obvious but too big to carry down from London (like my spare fridge), any suggestions?
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in A small town, Kent. Wed to Clare + dad to 2, I am a full-stack web engineer, + I do javascript / nodejs, some ruby, python, php ect ect. I like pubbing, running, eating, home automation + other diy jiggery-pokery, history, family tree stuff, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.