Sunday, October 7, 2012

A Good Change...of Plan





The breakfast at the Atlantis Hotel was great for a second day... ate and off to an early start.
 

Don says "Sometimes I wake up grumpy...but sometimes I let her sleep". Well this was one of the times he should have let me sleep. I woke up in (not a great mood) a bit of a bother! And had a grump on most of the day...but that did not phase Don from tormenting me mercilessly!

Volos and Pictures

We arrived in Volos just in time for the noon rush hour (yeah, yeah, yeah...I know you've heard this all before!) and decided to drive past our Hotel to get a bearing where it was in relation to everything else. Well it was in the middle of everything else! The waterfront was closeby but could not be seen or heard over the din of the traffic. I wanted to stop at the Hotel but Don wanted to continue on...well you can imagine how that went over...not big!

We drove through Volos and decided to continue on to Mount Pelion (where the mythical Achiles trained with the centaur Charon).  Mount Pelion We did a circle of Mount Pelion... Mount Pelion which is not at all for the faint of heart! These were some of the most daring roads we have driven in Greece. They were steep, narrow, with many switch backs but also there were no side barriers to a straight down drop of a few hundred meters. This is a photo of us on the top of Mount Pelion.
 
This is the google map of our route around Mount Pelion: Route Mount Pelion

It seems I was scared out of my grump and felt much better by the time we dcided not to stay at the Hotel we booked but to find a different one near the beach...somewhere.

We drove past Volos, through three nearby villages and no Hotel in sight we almost turned back to Volos. But one last attempt proved successful...we found a wonderful little hotel right on the beach in Nea Anchialos. I walked in, asked for a room, and saw two lovely rooms...for much less than what we would have paid at the congested, downtown hotel in Volos. Happy, happy, joy, joy...we got our bags up to the room and went for a swim! Hotel Opollo

Then the next order of business was to fill the gap created by all that swimming...food!


The restrauant right next to the hotel (Glaxious Fish Taverna) was a fish restrauant (Psyeria...fish). Not much convincing needed here.

The owner was marvelous! He waited on us hand and table! We did not completely understand the correct way to order "snacks and Tsipouro" . Tsipouro is a drink similar to Ouzo but can be drunk with or without the Anise flavouring. We decided to have one of each. It arrives at the table in ...little teeny, tiny bottles (which is all we could drink anyway).

But this is the part we didn't understand ...each bottle comes with a plate of 'snacks'...sardines with capers and a wonderful home made cabbage salad for the one bottle of 'drink' and the other bottle with perch and celery/dill/onions. The bread is always complementary and comes with a superb eggplant dip (similar to baba ganoush but chunkier). So, now we had three plates of food, bread and drink and we had ordered eggplant, zuchini, and two mains of fried and grilled squid...wait a minute...that is enough food for about eight people. Ohhh the food fiasco from Turkey was returning for a second go at us! Had we understood how it worked we would only have ordered snacks and drinks! But take a look at these squid and you will understand everything...

Don's squid were grilled...there were about 4 squid about 8" long...


My squid were fried and there was about a half dozen about 4" long with fried potatos...
A beautiful thick Greek yogurt topped with cherries and syrup was complementary from the owner for dessert!

Well we didn't leave hungery so...back to the hotel to have a good night sleep for an early rise.

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