Yesterday, almost immediately the plane had landed, Maice found herself literally being propelled out of her seat by Mr Fidget in his attempt to be the first off the airplane. I wouldn’t mind but the cabin crew had only just ‘doors to manual and cross check’ and as we were all patiently waiting for the doors to be opened no-one was moving in the aisles. Honestly, some people are just so impatient! We were fortunate to be seated in rows 8C and D so being at the front of the plane we were literally some of the first passengers to disembark onto the waiting buses. Luck seemed to be on our side as we were also the first passengers off the bus when we got to the terminal and where we joined the ‘snaking’ queue for the six passport control desks along with the previous flights passengers. Well, can you believe it, the airport staff only went and changed the layout so that there were now six queues instead of the one and because of the new configuration we ended up last in the queue for our desk! Of course not only were we now in the slowest queue but the people who were last off the plane were now ahead of us and heading towards baggage reclaim whilst we were doing the slow shoe shuffle to get our passports stamped! Not that we were in any hurry of course, but you know, it’s just an observation!
We finally made it out to baggage reclaim and waited for our luggage. And we waited, and we waited. Everyone was collecting their cases and disappearing out of the airport terminal until it was literally just Maice and I left alone at the carousel. Just as well we’d taken Maice’s advice and packed some ‘just in case clothes’ into our hand luggage. Just when we thought we’d have to report our luggage as ‘lost’ they appeared on the carousel and we breathed a sigh of relief. Phew, how lucky were we!
Before the holiday TUI advised us to download their APP which I have to say I’m very impressed with. It gives us all our flight details, transfer details, which coach number to look for, the number of stops to our hotel, location, things to do etc, etc. So having boarded coach no.87 we set off on our one hour, five stop transfer. What we noticed was how very dark it was, how very little lighting there was, even when driving through the villages, nothing was open and everywhere was like a ghost town. Admittedly it was now 12.45am but we did expect there to be a few signs of life. We arrived at our hotel, the Tropcial Sol in Tingaki at 1.45am, checked in and was escorted to our room by Stefanos. I think by now we were suffering from short-haul jet lag, we weren’t thinking clearly and subsequently spent the next half hour unpacking our suitcases and generally faffing about until we finally made it into our beds at 2.30am
We both woke at 4pm, freezing. Unfortunately we only found one blanket in the cupboard and as we were both cold we had to push the beds together, spread the blanket across the two beds and hoped it would be enough to keep us warm. It obviously did the trick as we managed a few hours sleep before waking at 7am to use the bathroom but for some reason the toilet wouldn’t flush…..hey, welcome to Greece. We rang reception to report the lack of flush and was told ‘someone will be there shortly’ which really means someone will be there ‘ανριο’….tomorrow! Desperate for the loo we quickly got dressed, made our way down to reception, used the loos and then went for breakfast. We still had no flush when we got back to the room so donned our bikinis, packed our beach bags and headed out in search of a cafe with comfy chairs in which to enjoy our first frappe of the holiday. We didn’t find a cafe but instead found ourselves on the road to the flamingos, which is a walk for another day so we about turned and instead ended up at Rooster, a bar/cafe which had some very comfy sunbeds. We asked if they were free if you had a drink and was told yes they were but in fact they weren’t as we were then charged 12 euros! Ok, they were comfy and the mattresses were thicker than our beds, but hey that’s not the point. We were also told that if we needed bar service all we had to do was to scan the QR code which was on the table and a waiter would be with us to take our order. We scanned the code and an hour and a half later we still hadnt had any ‘service’. Was it ‘user error’? Possibly. In need of our daily caffeine I went up to the cafe to order our drinks and was told in no uncertain terms to return to my sunbed and order from the woman whom took our money for the sunbeds!!! Honestly, this system, it’s all Greek to us!! Tomorrow we’re going to try a different plan. We’ll have a Frappe in a cafe first, then go in search of a sunbed. In fact we’ve decided that tomorrow we’re going to go to the hotels private beach for a free sunbe
Having roasted ourselves for a good few hours on our posh sunbeds we decided to leave the beach for the day and went in search of a nice place for lunch. We were looking forward to a Greek salad and a Mythos beer but our preferred cafe, Ipanema didnt do Greek salad so we ended up in a bar the other side of the hotel after which we went grocery shopping for provisions for the room. Can you believe this. We purchased four bottles of Greek white wine, six large bottles of water, two packets of crisps, a packet of pumpkin seeds and trail mix plus two Pizbuin lip salve with spf all for just €23. What a bargai
We finished the afternoon off at the hotel laying by the pool and it was lovely. We’re very impressed as we’re not usually pool people so we’ll definitely spend time there again. Thankfully our toilet was fixed when we returned to the room and with a fully stocked fridge we took ourselves onto the balcony, carried out some ‘admin’, watched the cows in the field opposite and cracked open our first bottle of wine which was simply gorgeous darlings, simply gorgeous. What a lovely early evening it was. The sun was still warm, it was very tranquil and there we were, on our balcony, sipping wine in a country where the grape is grown. It was all very Shirley Valentine!
We dolled ourselves up and went in search of somewhere to eat and ended up at Dana just along the beach road. We both had Octopus which was beautifully cooked. The waiters were friendly, the service was great and Maice did well to ask for the bill in Greek much to the surprise and amusement of the waiters. To finish off our evening and indeed our first day in Kos we went for cocktails at the Ipanema bar and enjoyed two espresso martinis. Delish……!
We still feel ‘jet lagged’ and hope we get a decent nights sleep. We should do as we now have a blanket each so καληνύχτα και θα σε δω αύριο το πρωί!
Μ&Α χχ
I can almost taste the Mythos 💜💜