The 28th July 2007 marked the 1 year anniversary of my move to this beautiful island that I now call home. What a year of change it has been - up until just over a year ago I could never have imagined that I would be living on a Greek island. Moving here has been one of the best decisions I have made in my lifetime & I have no regrets.
So how did I spend my anniversary - not how I would have wished I'm afraid as I spent it in bed trying to rid myself of a horrendous migraine LOL. Thanks to all the friends that sent me their good wishes for my 1st anniversary, they were much appreciated.
The day after my anniversary was also my daughter Justine's birthday. She returned from Australia on 17th July & it has been absolutely wonderful to see her again. Simon is still in Australia as he may get called for interviews in relation to his visa application which both of them are still waiting on. We had a small gathering to celebrate her birthday, including Sia & Otto (our landlady & husband) & Otto's daughter & family who were visiting from Switzerland at the time.
While Justine is back here she's continuing to work the same hours that she was working in Australia as she's still mentoring some of the new Australian staff & needs to be online at the same time. This means that her working hours are 2am - 10.45 am so we catch a few hours to see each other during late morning/early afternoon before I then go to work - she is then in bed by 7pm.
I posted earlier that my brother, David, had visited me at the beginning of July. Well I had an absolutely fabulous week with him & if he enjoyed it just half as much as I did then he also had a great time. I hadn't seen him since the party that my family gave me just before I left the UK.
I was beginning to think he would never arrive as his flight finished up being delayed by 6 hours. When I finally went to pick him up from the airport, as I was walking towards the terminal there he was walking towards me, he must have got out in record time. Big hugs followed & in no time at all we were back at my house & he was settling in.
At the time of his visit I was still working at the tattoo studio so was not starting work until 5pm so on his first full day we took a trip into Zakynthos town.
I'd booked the following day off work so that we could have a whole day to spend together & we decided that we would do an excursion as I hadn't done any myself either. I left it up to David to book us onto something & he booked us to do the boat cruise up to the North of the island including the famous shipwreck beach. Here's a few photos from the day.
David was hoping that his week here would allow him to relax while taking a break from 5 children at home & a stressful job in central London. I think he's beginning to look pretty relaxed here on the cruise boat as we head up the East coast towards the North of the island
I think I'm looking pretty happy & relaxed too - well why not, it's my day off, the sun is shining, I'm on a boat cruising on the azure Ionian Sea & best of all I'm here with my brother.
Here are a few pictures taken along the way showing some of the Blue Caves & Navagio (Shipwreck Beach)
This was a really brilliant day out.
One of the funniest nights out we had was when we decided to give karaoke a go. I have been known to inflict myself on people's eardrums on a number of occasions as I love singing. My friend Debbie has had to endure me on karaoke on 2 occasions so far. Well, David also has a liking for getting up & singing & I had never seen/heard him on karaoke before & he had never seen/heard me. So one evening while I was at work David had decided to walk towards Laganas from my house & on his way he found a bar with karaoke on that night so promptly sent, me a text to tell me where to meet him after work. By the time I arrived David had already had quite a few bevies & had been up singing 4 times so I had some catching up to do.
I probably sang about 5 different songs over the night & David also sang a good few & got collared by someone to sing a duet too as they thought he had a good voice (even though he was a bit unsteady on his feet by now)
We had such a laugh that evening. David wanted to sing 'Delilah' which is apparently a bit of a party piece for him (probably our Welsh side showing itself which probably also accounts for our love of singing) Well believe it or not, from the 10,000 songs they did have, they didn't have 'Delilah' - so was that going to put David off - not on your life. He proceeded to give a rendition of Delilah over the mike totally unaccompanied but not just once, he did it 4 times over the course of the night & then couldn't remember doing it at all the next day LOL.
All too quickly the time came around for him to leave Zakynthos to return to England. It was wonderful to see him here & hopefully he'll be back again soon & bring the rest of the family with him.
That's all for now folks :-))
