A Great Week Spent With A Great Friend

All too quickly my friend Jan, from the UK, arrived for a weeks holiday & departed again. The time went by so fast but it was so lovely to see her here again.

Here we both are in the Alsandros Bar in Kalamaki one evening.

Luckily, as I'm working at Garden Village Apartments Jan was able to come & spend the daytimes there, while I worked. So, as I was rushing around cooking, serving, washing up etc etc she was there lying on her sun bed relaxing & enjoying her holiday.
Most days she came in to work at the same time as me in the car & on a couple of occasions, after having a morning lie in she walked!!! or cycled in later. On the days she came in with me she gave me a hand by wiping down the tables & the bar tops for me, first thing, which was much appreciated. In fact I very much miss my morning helper now.

Jan took this picture of me working at the pool bar. A bit of a change from my old Civil Service days :-))

My daughter Justine, knowing she would be in Australia for my birthday, had been in touch with Jan before she came out to stay with me. Justine had organised that Jan would buy my birthday present on her behalf up to a given amount. What a lovely thought that was. We decided to go into Zakynthos town in the evening & have a look around the shops for my birthday present. Jan hadn't been into town the last time she was here so we also decided to make an evening of it & have a meal there too. We had a lovely meal at The Village Inn which is on the harbour road.

Here's a couple of photos of us taken at The Village Inn. After the meal we headed to the main shopping street & with the money from Justine I had a very enjoyable time shopping. It was great to have Jan there because I could ask her opinion of clothes I was trying on.

A big, big THANK YOU to Justine for my birthday money - I know she reads my blog.

Many people reading this will already know that Zakynthos is one of the islands where the loggerhead turtles come each year to lay their eggs & as they are an endangered species there are measures to protect them. My friend Debbie does voluntary work for Archelon, one of the main protection organisations. You can read more about their work by following this Archelon link.
The turtles are already arriving & so while Jan was here we decided that after work one day myself, Jan, Debbie & her daughter Simone would take a pedello out from Kalamaki beach & go turtle spotting. It was a beautiful sunny late afternoon as we set off out into the bay. There were a few others out too & we noticed some people who appeared to be watching something & so headed in that direction. Sure enough we spotted the head of a turtle as it popped up for air. It was the first one I had seen too as the previous year I was here at the wrong times. We moved on to another area, constantly scanning the sea for signs of turtles. We spotted another couple & gently made our way to where they were. We got quite close & Jan decided she would like to swim with them & she slipped into the sea & swam over to them. She was able to get right up to one of them & was very excited that she had been able to experience it.
Once again we moved off to another area & Simone joined Jan in the sea for a swim closely followed by myself. I expected the sea to still be quite cold but in fact in was warmer than the swimming pool where I work.




We managed to get a photograph of one of the turtles when we spotted it beneath us on the sea bed. It's not very clear but I hope that you can just make out the shape of the turtle, it was quite big.



One of our last nights before Jan had to go home was spent having a meal in the company of Kev, a friend who is opening his new bar, Oceanic, in Kalamaki very soon. A good meal in the company of good friends, what more could you ask.