What's that strange yellow thing?....

 

Common sight of frost on the pontoon this week.

 We have had some fabulous weather during the day for the last couple of weeks and feeling very warm in the sunshine.  We had almost forgotten what the sun looked like for a while but it seems to be back where it belongs for the time being at least.  The downside of this deep high pressure is the nights are very cool indeed, in fact we have had several mornings where, for early birds like us, we have arisen to find the pontoon white over with frost.  Hey you can't have it all ways.

No so cold in front of this at Mama Mia's

Last Thursday evening we decided to have a look at Nidri for something to eat and where very suprised to find Mama Mia's open for business and with a roaring fire outside to welcome the customers in.  They had a Greek trio playing traditional music for the evening and whilst this isn't really my cup of tea we did have a great time and the restaurant was packed with people both Greek and foreigners.

Mama Mia starting to get packed last for "Burnt Thursday"

Lefkas town illuminations ready for carnival.

We have been taking advantage of the better weather and power washed all the decks in an attempt to shift the winter grime.  This has not been entirely successful as we still have some black marks which are proving very stubborn.  I think these may have come about with people in the town now using much more wood as heating fuel over winter, the resulting smoke being delivered to our boat in the rain.  Never mind, when we remove the winter awning we'll get some acid at the black bits, that'll cure it.

We've also replaced our mooring lines with new ones and new rubber shock absorbers as the snatching we have been experiencing during the recent storms had frayed our old (less than a year old) ones.  At least we have no more creaks and squeaks.

A walk through town the other night showed us that preparations for this weekends Carnival was well under way and the lights near "Chinese" bridge are particularly pretty.  All the shops and restaurants and bars are all decco'd up ready for the event which precedes the forty days of fasting in lent.  There will be an enormous quantity of meat eaten this week "just to stock up" as one Greek guy said to us.

Little Taverna in Menidi on the Amvraticus Gulf

Shock cord on the passerelle modified yet again.

Yesterday, we had a ride around the gulf looking for a particular place we had spotted on Google earth which with Allen and Jean in Cyprus.  Although we have located the area we cannot get to it from the land so a real exploration will have to wait until we take the boat in that area.  Whilst on our travels we stopped at Menidi between Amfilochio and Arta on the gulf side.  Just nosing about as you do.  We went into a little Taverna for a coffee and spent a marvellous hour of so talking to a couple of local people in pigeon Greek and pigeon English.  Politics is very much the subject on all their minds at the moment or rather the lack of money resulting from politics.  Things are hard for all the ordinary people here and you only really get a taste of that when you get away from the real tourist destinations and you find electronic and engineering graduates can't even get jobs doing very menial things, things have got to change here I think I just don't know if the people can survive long enough to see the better times which might result from it.