Language and people!

So far here I have found a place that sells coffee and BIERS! Is that in case the coffee kills you off? At breakfast, where the coffee, by the way, is pretty bad, you can have baked BEENS!

In the hotel room there is a little booklet, Porto Carras History Book, which tells how the place was developed, initially by one Yiannis Carras. Apparently he loved to travel in his yacht, “which he STIRRED wearing his trademark red knit cap”. The land was very marshy but he had a vision, although it took him “three years IN ORDER to drain the swamps, open roads and create the appropriate underlying infrastructure”, etc, etc.

On the whole, despite those two errors, which made me smile, the booklet is in much better English than many I have come across in smart hotels in Europe. The place has catered for the rich and famous, and sometimes infamous. Salvador Dalí had his own red room and designed his own bathroom. At least one of the Kennedys has stayed here, as have François Mitterrand and Vladimir Putin! Who knows who we might rub shoulders with.

The views are good.

 And the seawater pool is fine.

I read that the marina here was the first in northern Greece to cater for leisure yachts. And the yachts are impressive. Enormous things, like mini cruise boats. We thought there was a lot of money moored n the marina at Sanxenxo but these make those yachts look like little rowing boats.

But the people are nice and friendly. We were looking for sticking plasters, one of the items I managed to leave behind at home, and asked in the tat shops which are sprinkled around the complex if there was a pharmacy. One shopkeeper we spoke to told us that he planned to drive to the nearest village, too far to walk, at around midday and would go to the pharmacy there and get some for us. We could go back to his shop later in the afternoon. Amazing!

Walking around I came across two motorbikes parked on the edge of the carpark, right under a sign forbidding motorcycle parking!

Greek anarchy!