DAY 91-100 - OakHall Tour (Nea Makri, Greece)

The Kiwi and Irish girls

Upon meeting our tour group at the airport we quickly realised that this tour would be a stark contrast to our Topdeck one.  The group consists of a variety of ages and stages of life - quite a few teachers and all from the UK.  We soon got dubbed the crazy Kiwi girls and regularly gave lessons on the Kiwi language.  Jess was a name they found tricky with all sorts of interpretations - Jaz, Jasmine, Guez etc even when she put on a phony English accent they often failed to get the pronounciation just right!

This tour was set up to be a very relaxing holiday again a big contrast to the hustle and bustle of 13 countries in 24 days - bliss!  Out of the 10 days at the Hotel Thomas Beach, 3 were excursion days and the rest were free days to check out Nea Makri, the beach or the pool - it was really too hot to do much else.
Hotel living agreed with us, no bunk beds, air conditioning, ensuites, wardrobes and drawers - ah the small things, also not having to pack our bags for 10 whole days has been magic!
The "most important things in life" changed from where are we staying, how are we getting there and what are we going to eat, not to mention how much is it all going to cost to... pool or beach and where can I fill my drink bottle (oh and where is the closest toilet that I'm allowed to flush the paper down - that's a hard habit to break!)
The week started out with blistering temperatures reaching the 40's and has ended with strong winds bringing it back down to a more mild high 20's.
As always the supermarkets were one of the first port's of call and with most of the packaging being in Greek and the supermarkets being 2 storey's they were quite different to the Tesco's and Marks and Spencers that we had grown to love while in the UK.  We also sampled some of the sweet delicacies at the bakery including Baklava and other one's I wouldn't have a clue what they were called!  Lipton tea was back and Kath had a great plan of buying a 1.5 litre bottle to use for the rest of the week as a drink bottle but the cleaners were too fast for her, whisking it away to the rubbish not long after she had finsihed the last drop...much to her despair!

More on food we got Breakfast and Dinner provided by the Hotel and breakfast consisting of the most amazing fruit salad and Greek yoghurt was a winner
Finding a launderette sent Abby and Jess on a wild goose chase faround 3 different dry cleaning places finally having success at Texa's where they couple behind the counter spoke minimal english, but after alot of sign language and washing machine like movements they left hoping that their clothes would be washed when they came back at the end of the day.  Hooray, when they returned not only were they washed but they had been dried and folded and bagged up in this massive bag (Kath is trying to give you perception in the photo below!)

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At night speaker Martin from Bedford, UK spoke to us from some of the Parables from Luke.  This was then followed by our evening meal and then we headed out into the cool night to some different cafe's our tour leader Kathryn recommended for dessert, frappe's and general catching up on what each other had been up to for the day.

On Friday night we headed out for some ten-pin bowling action.