Twas the day (and a half) before Christmas...

Half a tree on the fire in Mantha's Kafenion

Well Christmas is nearly here and I'm sure everyone back in the UK will be getting either very excited or very depressed about it, I hope you are all of the former group rather than the latter.  Christmas here in Greece is not the major festival it tends to be in the rest of the western world although here on the island they are more into it than on the mainland where we used to live.  We were up there yesterday visiting our Greek "family" and friends and despite a few small things like an odd decorated Christmas tree you wouldn't think that there is anything much going on.  In fact on the telephone the other day talking to Christos (the son of our good friends Mantha and Jorgos) he was wanting us to go there on Saturday to celebrate his name day with no mention of Christmas, this seems really strange as the Greeks are a real overtly religious people.  Jorgos is not even having time off for Christmas day and Boxing day both his petrol station and the cafe will be open as usual.  On Lefkas things are a little different there are many street decorations and the shops are decorated for the festive season although neither to the extent which people at home would expect and it's only really happened in the last couple of weeks not since the middle of October like it does in the UK.

Snow at the side of the roads where we turned arround

The IKEA store in Ioannina has finally opened and last Saturday Sandra and I decided we would go and have a look to see if we could get some opening bargains on a Settee and dining table and chairs.  From here it's about a two hour drive to get there but we were to incorporate it with some general shopping at the large supermarkets in the city and also fill up with diesel at Carrefour  which is the cheapest we know of 1.31Euro per litre (about £1.11 / lt at today's exchange rate) it can be as high as 1.48Euro (£1.26) and you can see two garages next to each other with over 10 cents difference in price.  Any way about 5 miles from the IKEA store the traffic stopped and we noticed that nothing was coming from the opposite direction so we thought there may have been an accident as there was quite a bit of snow on the road sides and Greek tyres are very often tread-less.  We spoke to a guy who was stood at the side of the road on a telephone who explained that there had been a snow slide off the side of the mountain which had blocked the road and it would be a couple of hours before it was cleared.  After a brief wait we decided that we would about turn and head for Arta to do our bit of shopping which we did.  A couple of hours later we thought shall we try again while we were relatively near and so tried again this time we made it.  The store is huge, bigger and better laid out than the one in Thessaloniki (or the one in Leeds for that matter) and has a huge great Jumbo store next to it as well.  We made a note of the things we might buy as they didn't seem to have the opening bargains I had been hoping for, and decided to return again in the middle of January when they might have a sale on.

Sandra loading wood into the car for the fire at home.

We were supposed to be going to Assos on Monday but when we rang it seemed that Mantha would be going to hospital that day so we resolved to go Tuesday.  Sandra, taking no risks thought she would ring and make sure Tuesday was OK but no!  Mantha was going to hospital on Tuesday instead so we arranged Wednesday.  This was lucky for me because Tony and Liz were bring "Izola" their small yacht from Lefkas marina down to Nidre in preparation for the race on the 27th which leaves from Nidre.  Seeing as I now had the day free I could have a sail down with them.  Unfortunately the trip was almost entirely directly into the wind so we had to beat up all the way into a quite choppy sea.  we did however stay surprisingly dry given that it's such a small boat.  3 Hours later we were safely moored up in Nidre and back with Sandra who had been enjoying a coffee whilst we got there.

The ultimate four by four transport

Sandra and I have been out this morning scavenging for more firewood to see us through the festive period, and on the way back passed a couple of ageing Greeks in the olive grove harvesting their olives and parked at the side of the road were their donkeys so we thought that being that time of year were donkeys and stables are at the forefront of everybody's minds we would take a couple of pictures although I don't think that Mary and Joseph would have had ther stepladder strapped to the donkeys side!

Have Ladder will travel!

Anyway that's about it for now just to wish every body a fine, happy and healthy holiday season and a great new year to come Kala Christouyena as the Greeks say.