Thursday 29 October 2009

Stay in Lefkas

As mentioned in earlier posts we rented a villa in the small village of Apolpena in the hills just above Lefkas City (sounds very grand for a town). Tony the villa owner was there to meet us on our arrival bearing gifts well there was a fantastic welcome pack in the villa anyway. He gave us another tour of the place and showed us how to operate the various appliances washing machine etc. and was generally very helpful. The villa was equipped with everything you could wish even a pair of binoculars for admiring the view, there were also lots of books and Cd's in case you had forgotten to bring anything but your kossie. Just in case anyone missed it earlier here is a link to Tony's booking site. http://www.ownersdirect.co.uk/greece/GR120.htm I cannot recommend his villa too highly and if you come for a long stay out of season he is open to negotiation.

The picture shows Mark (from the yacht Options) Liz (Tony's partner) and Tony with the streamers all over his head.










In our stay at Apolpena Tony & Liz introduced us to many of the expats who live in and around the area, mostly on live aboard yachts in the marina. Many of these have become firm friends, Kev & Linda, Mark & Maureen, Flash, and John Chips deserve a special mention but there are many more who I'm afraid must continue to be anonymous.

It was our intention to use the trip primarily to find some long term accommodation, preferably to rent but not ruling out any options. Renting is preferred because it's much easier to get out of if you have made a mistake and it also means that if for some reason you fancy moving to a different area all you have to do is get on yer bike and find somewhere, no need to wait for a buyer etc.

We looked at many properties on Lefkas Island and also on the mainland but we kept going back to Assos to see George and Martha who we met when we were at Parga. George found us several places local to him to have a look at including the place where we now are living. We picked this up for about a third of the cost of a similar apartment in a tourist area.

This picture shows Sandra with Martha & George our very special Greek friends. George is a bit of a Danny Devito look alike bearing in mind Sandra is only 5ft 5 and she's stooping here!! We love them dearly and could never have been where we are now without their help. All this started from just stopping at a filling station for a Frappe and talking to them about our plans to live for long periods in Greece, even though they have very little English and we have very little Greek it's amazing how you can communicate with the odd reference to your well thumbed phrase book.

Anyway towards the end of our stay George got us in touch with the owner of the maisonette we now have and we agreed on a one year deal with the option to extend if we are mutually happy with the arrangement.


Not much but we call it Home - Our Assos house has two decent sized double bedrooms a large dining kitchen and good sized lounge. And the bathroom has a bath as well as shower. The wonderful thing about it though it that it has 180 degree panoramic views mountains east and west and straight down the valley north and south.





Our Stay in Lefkas was a truly wonderful time we went to parties, got invited as crew in a yacht race (thanks to flash for taking on the handicap), witnessed a fantastic soap box derby down a huge hill behind Nidre with the carts reaching speeds of 30 mph and whats more the road wasn't closed to traffic (brave lads and lass'). The Greek people are the hospitable people in the world, in my opinion anyway, if you ever come out here just ask around and you can find people who will help you with anything.

We returned home full of hope for the future as well as a notebook full of measurements for curtains etc with which to return in late September. We took two days going home after disembarking the Ferry at Ancona in Italy one overnight stop at Grafenhausen and then back to dear old Yorkshire with the wind and the rain and the rain and the rain and the rain....

Next, roll on September

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