October 2016

My Big Fat Greek Getaway: Week #1 - Turtlespotting, Oprah, Sunsets, Souvlaki and Spice Girls

GREETINGS FELLOW EARTHLINGS! A couple of months ago I (unfortunately) returned from my big fat Greek getaway and have LOTS to share with you about my travels so get comfortable.

Myself and my friend Danielle decided to go to Zakynthos (also known as Zante), one of the Ionian islands off Greece for three weeks (I know that seems like a long time but we were sick of Ireland like you wouldn't believe so we needed to get away for a substantial period of time for the sake of our sanity).

We set off from Dublin airport, first flying Dublin to Manchester, waiting 5 hours in Manchester airport (in the middle of the night - NOWHERE was open, no food, no coffee, no people. Great fun). Then at 4:30am we flew from Manchester direct to Zakynthos. It was much cheaper to do it this way, there were no direct flights from Ireland and the option Sky Scanner gave us was a €535 flight from Dublin which stopped in THREE PLACES and would've resulted in a 24 hour layover altogether. No thank you!

(I picked up this book in Dublin airport, I haven't read all of it yet but will keep you posted on my thoughts, the title sounds promising!)

(Manchester airport, 2am delirium)

17 hours later (altogether) we arrived at our accommodation in Laganas on the island of Zakythos. We stayed at Tassia Studios which was very basic but perfect for what we needed, it was a €6 taxi or a five minute quad ride from the strip (would definitely recommend renting a quad for your stay - it was so handy to have because we could go anywhere and saved a lot of money that would've been spent on taxis) so it was the perfect location. We named our quad Rita.

The first day we were pretty exhausted from the 17 hour journey so we spent the rest of the day at the beach and unpacked our things.

The next day we booked a boat trip on a glass bottom boat (a three hour trip for €15 which I thought was great value) and set off to see some turtles - we were more excited than most of the children on the boat when we saw them!

The turtles were so tame and weren't afraid of the boats, they came right up to the water a few times to pose for photos for the excited gang of us on the boat.

This turtles name is Sartouri and he was patient enough to surface a few times for us all to get photos of him (he's not camera shy, some of them are).

(Can you make him out in the below photo? They were absolutely huge and it was so cool to see them through the bottom of the boat)

Next up we saw the Keri caves - there are so many all around the island but these, along with the Blue Caves to the North of the island, are the most famous ones in Zakynthos. The colour of the sea is insane, it looks just like the photos you see of Greece that you think are photoshopped!

Next up was Turtle Island - which, as the name suggests, is where the turtle eggs are laid and protected until they hatch. Unfortunately we didn't see any of the baby turtles hatching and running into the ocean, I think they tend to do this at night mainly because of all the nesting beaches we came across we never once saw any activity! Although apparently if you do see turtles hatching at night you can't take photos of them using a flash because it blinds them for 15 minutes and so they might not make it to the ocean (poor little things!)

Back on the beach I read some of Oprah's book ('What I Know For Sure' - I basically thought I was Oprah by the end of the holiday after reading this) and thought I would include a couple of my favourite parts of the book here!

..Dinner with a view..

The sunsets in Greece are the most amazing colours but the crazy thing is - you rarely actually see the sun setting! Because there are so many islands and a lot of them are quite mountainous, the sun disappears behind the mountains long before it actually sets. A couple of evenings after dinner we would venture up the mountains on the quad and we caught a few amazing sunsets that way (in between the quad breaking down/taking turns at an alarming rate and/or running out of petrol and being stranded for a few hours but HEY we saw the sunset!)

We were told by my cousin who once spent an entire summer in Ios (another Greek island, not an iPhone update), that we had to try a traditional Greek 'dish' called Souvlaki/Gyros and the Greek beer Mythos. I have to say we were not disappointed! A souvlaki/gyros is a strange combination of things but somehow it works, it consists of a pitta, filled with chips, salad and your choice of meat. The difference between Souvlaki and Gyros is just the way the meat is cut (kebab style or just chopped normally - can't quite recall which is which). I usually don't like beer but this one was really easy to drink and didn't leave a bad after taste like I find a lot of beers do!

Sidenote: on night 3 of the holiday we ended up in A&E (of course we did, three days into a three week holiday). I won't go into the gory details but basically I managed to get myself an injury to my foot which resulted in some pretty painful experiences (5 numbing injections and LOTS of swearing) and a giant bandage who I named Philip and had to go back and get changed every second night for a week. Not the most fun. But surprisingly - this could just be me trying to see the positive in just about everything - we have the most hilarious memories from those A&E visits, so apart from the pain and the inconvenience, it wasn't all bad!) Also ended up in A&E in the last week with a chest infection (you wouldn't mind but nothing EVER happens me at home, I NEVER get sick or injured) and had to get an inhaler who I named Jim to help me breathe good (you can imagine how cool I looked on the beach and in the night clubs with my inhaler). Safe to say I'm a travelling disaster but Danielle was INCREDIBLY patient and saw the funny side to the entire debacle so that made it much easier *round of applause for Danielle please and thank you* Luckily she was also the designated quad driver (she doesn't even trust me to drive a car without crashing so the quad was out of the question) so we were still able to get around easily, I just had a pirate limp for the first week and a bit!

The night life in Zante is also insane - in a good way mostly! The strip has so many different night clubs on it, all with completely different vibes. Not going to lie, the first night we went out we drank local vodka beforehand (mistake) and the next day Danielle was telling me we were in night clubs I could have sworn I had never stepped foot in before. The only other proof I have is blurry photos and snapchat videos on my phone! Needless to say we learned our lesson and didn't go for QUITE so cheap vodka after that. BUT we met two Irish girls Colleen and Cliona that night who we immediately became super close with (and renamed ourselves the Spice Girls) and we hung out with them for the next two weeks until they moved on to the next island (they were island hopping), we have some hilarious memories with them (and lots we can't remember) between losing Cliona on almost a nightly basis (one nightclub called Cherry Bay didn't close until 9am on weekends and she always insisted on staying until the last minute with whoever else was there), some horrendous hangover days on the beach and being serenaded on a pirate ship (see following blog post for more), we had an amazingly fun time. Every girl needs to go on a girls holiday at least once in their life - there is nothing quite like them! We definitely made friends for life in these girls, by the time they left it felt like we had known them for years.

(Excuse the photo quality - Snapchat doesn't have the best focus but it happened to be where I captured some of the best memories!)

On one of our mountain quad adventures in our first week to a place called Vasilikos, we also came across another nesting beach (turtle beach) and a turtle rescue centre/sanctuary where they take care of injured turtles or the baby ones that didn't make it to the ocean until they are strong enough to be released! They also protect the nesting beaches and ensure the turtle eggs have the safe environment they need to hatch and produce healthy baby turtles.