Notenoughsleepos

An early morning bus meant an early morning wake up call. We were up late last night celebrating Lily’s arrival and rather than waste time this morning trying to negotiate buses to get to the station we thought we would just get taxis to take some stress out of the day. It was a 45 minute walk from our accommodation to the bus station, so Jess thought we should allow 75 minutes for a taxi, just in case. My protestations fell on deaf ears and so the taxis were booked, reducing our sleep time by 30 minutes, crucial minutes in my daily grumpiness quota. To be fair though, I did get plenty of ‘I told you so’ time when the taxi took 15 minutes and we had an hour or so to kill at the station, these things have a habit of evening out I feel. Lily was full of the joys of travelling, it’s all new to her so early starts are a bit of a novelty, for the rest of the girls, they started off a little slowly but soon enough Lily’s infectious enthusiasm rubbed off and they were all yakking and laughing as we waited for the bus,
The bus trip was equally as boring as the two previous occasions we have done it, although we did pass close-ish to a fire burning in the forests of Evia, we saw plenty of water bombing planes circling round in the distance. We got to the ferry port and we were like old pros, the twins jumped off the bus and grabbed some benches under shade in the seating area and we waited for the boat to arrive. We had filled Lily in on what was required to get a good seat on the boat, it was even more important now as it seems like since it is August it is full tourist season, it was way busier than even two days ago. So she was ready to go and was a little upset that a couple of people seemed to be getting preferential treatment and boarding first, until I pointed out that they were helping some disabled passengers. She grudgingly accepted this explanation, while keeping her eye on the guy who would give us the boarding signal. As soon as he did she was off, weaving through the crowds to get to the front, she was first on the boat and we had the pick of of the seats. The boat trip was also much like our previous experiences, although today we had volleyball and table tennis as our Olympic sports for our viewing pleasure. The boat stopped at some of the previous islands we had visited, Skiathos and Skopelos and then it was on to Alonissos. The twins and I went in a taxi with all the bags to our accommodation, we aren’t getting a car here, and Jess, Lily and Ruby walked, it was less than half an hour. While we waited we popped to a nearby shop to grab some essentials and they stopped at a bakery on the way. The cardinal rule was broken, never go into a bakery hungry, and they arrived at the villa loaded up with cake. So we sat and ate that, then wandered down to the beach for a quick swim to cool off, although by now it was about 8.30 so the heat had gone out of the day. It was just a quick dip then back to the villa to get changed and head out back to the waterside where we had spotted a nice looking restaurant for our dinner. The girls had mostly overdone it in the cake earlier and so they didn’t finish off what they ordered, except for Tate who polished off hers, wiped her plate with some bread, then got stuck into what Allegra had left, while scraping the last of the tzatziki. I’m not sure where she puts it all. Luckily the walk back to the villa is uphill so we managed to all work a bit of it off. First impressions of Alonissos are good, it doesn’t seem as busy as some of the other islands, and has a fairly relaxed feel. We will do a bit of exploring tomorrow to see what else we can see.Read more