Post Holiday Blues

Sunday 19 September. Been back from Skiathos two days now and it's never stopped raining!!! Hope it doesn't wash my tan off before I can parade it.

Had a lovely time on Skiathos...we even had a thunderstorm and torrential rain on the first day proper just to remind us of Manchester. The rest of the week though - what a scorcher! Approx 11 hours of sunshine a day, temperatures up in the high 20s and at times a bit too hot (it's the English way to complain about the weather no matter how nice it is). The apartment we stayed in, Hotel Elsa, was about a kilometre or so outside the main town located just off the ring road! It is a lovely place, run by Horst, a German (with a sense of humour!) and his Greek wife Elsa (hence the name of the hotel). Except it isn't a hotel in the strictest sense of the word, more of a block of self catering apartments which looked out over the pool and bar area. Everything was covered in grape vines but for some reason which I never found out Horst wasn't allowed to pick the grapes for wine making...it would have been a great USP for the bar if he could. Horst is a Bayern Munich fan and I was expecting quite a bit of grief from him after last season's Champion's League match against them and Rafael's red card (courtesy of Ribery, Roben and company) but Horst was either very diplomatic or he was suffering from short term memory loss and was hoping that I wouldn't bring up the subject of the '99 Final! As our flight from Manchester got into Skiathos in the evening all we did on that first day was have a few drinks with Horst and the other new arrivals before a very warm night in our basic but clean apartment. More to follow on Skiathos when I get the time