July 16 Finally a chance to sleep in although I thought the wind will blow the roof off. Another warm, blue sky day - YEAH Lazy morning, plan to visit Ambelos, the village on other side of island where Stan's mum, Poppy, grew up. It's a beautiful island, mountainous, blue clear water, lovely people. Typical Greek Island house but these look real, not dolled up for tourists. Ballos is very small yet has 5-6 places to eat! We spent the Wednesday locally. The...

Leaving Naplflio at 7 am we started our journey to Damos, Stan's mums home island. After a bit of a hiccup with hire car, firstly it was in town not at airport, secondly too small to fit our luggage, we got a bigger car and set off along the narrow, winding scenic roads ( seems to be a recurring theme) towards Ballos beach in the mid south of Samos. It's very mountainous and quite green. Olive trees everywhere. His cousins have small beach houses at Balos. It ...

Another early start to try beat the heat and tour buses as we set off for the ancient theatre of Epidaurus. It was the 5th century BC Greek version of Hepburn Springs. A sanctuary for healing, contemplation, soul cleansing, the arts and athletics. Little remains of the bath houses, sanctuary, hospital, temples but some of the stadium and much of the theatre remains. Incredibly the acoustics of the theatre are still pretty good, with regular performances held ther...

Today we went back to the "chorio" - the village Stan's dad grew up in -Soulanari. We met with Arthur's brother, Nick, and his wife as well as a visit to his aunty in a neighbouring village. The girls were able to experience 'real Greece', true village life, just lie the rest of the world, young people are leaving villages to live in the cities. We also had some yummy home cooked food, pork so tender it just melted in your mouth. Such a shame we can't speak Gre...

Funnily enough Karen and her friend Fran were on the same flight to Athens. We picked up re hire car, tried to remember to stop saying "grazie and per favour" and bread the Athenian traffic with mad Greek drivers. Pretty easy actually except most streets near Stan's aunts place are one way.....tricky. We caught up with Maria and Nick, Maria used to run an English school, she is very understanding and has terrific English. Then we headed into the acropolis. Ver...