Departure Time

All good things must come to an end they say

This time it was the good weather and my brother's visit

Gale force winds stopped boats from leaving harbour all over the country.  Next day I got a call from the hydrofoil office, no boats out or in till the afternoon, and our visitors had to be at the airport by 1 oclock.  This is the second time they've  been cut off on their departure day.  Last visit it was at least January and mid winter.  This time of the year the winds are usually much calmer.  Uusally.  there is no 'usual' now.

 The perils of living on an island.

Souvenir stands are sand bagged down so they don't end up in the harbour

Poros is only just an island and lucky for us the car ferry to the mainland was still working.  So suitcases and travellers were bundled into the car, the car onto the ferry, and we drove them the 3 hours to the airport.  The car ferry takes only 10 minutes to carry us across to the mainland and the harbour is rarely choppy enough to stop it running.  We aren't often completely isolated.

There's a big shopping park near the airport, IKEA being one of the big stores in the complex.  We thought we would go in for coffee after we had dropped them off, not for shopping.  Quick cheap food, refills of coffee.  Half of Athens and their small children had the same idea.  I couldn't believe how crowded, and noisy, it was.  We should have realised when we saw the car park and just turned and run.  We did go inside though and queued for a coffee and a snack and then shot out as fast as we could.  The driver needed a rest.

Before the dash for the airport we had the credit card fiasco.  I went up to the ATM to get some cash and my card got sucked in to the machine.  My brother was clever enough not to try his card but dear K couldn't believe that it was the machine's fault and marched in with card in hand

and his got sucked in too

A Muttley snigger!!!

He made angry phone calls all over the place but even his persuasive shouting couldn't get his card back till the next morning.

When we went in early next day 3 others had already retrieved their cards and there was a pile of about a dozen others, mostly greek cards, but a couple of foreign ones too.  You'd think that once the machine stopped working and someone made a complaint, to the the telephone displayed on the machine for this purpose, that some sort of notice would have come up on the screen.

A few years ago this happened to a neice of ours, just an hour before she was due to leave the island on the hydrofoil.  Back then K made a phone call to a teller we know and she came down  straight away and retrieved the card .  It's a bit more complicated now we have joined the world of ibanking and plastic cash and we have the EU and the IMF breathing over our shoulder watching every move.

Brother is long gone back to the southern hemisphere and we have a new round of visitors from downunder.  The weather is absolutely brilliant, almost 28o most days, a second summer.  Perfect for swimming and dinners outside under the full moon.