Fiskardo by Night

What was it I was saying in our last post about being King of the Castle? Well it was only minutes later that I found my castle. Sadly though it was in ruins, and there wasn't much left to be king of. But I did strike what I thought was a suitably regal pose for my next picture, and, looking at it now, I feel that I was rather lucky that that crack over my head didn't get any bigger!

On our way back to our boat we spotted a restuarant that the lead crew had recommended to us, especially good for moussaka, we were told. It was Nicolas' Taverna, at the top of a short hill.

We decided to return there for a meal and what a good choice it was. As it wasn't a waterfront restaurant it wasn't crowded and we got the very best of service. We were also the only British diners there. We were able to sit outside on a terrace looking down on the harbour ...

... and as you can see there were some lovely flowers scenting the warm night air. Fiskardo at night was a rather magical sight ... we sat there for quite a while taking it all in and the wonderful atmosphere ...

... until we started to get hungry and thirsty. We can really recommend the wine ...

... our choice that night was a cool and refreshing rose, lovely to look at and even better to drink. The food lived up to expectations too, especially the moussaka that had been recommended.  

We did hear from others in our flotilla that the Thai restaurant in Fiskardo was very good, but we'd had such a lovely evening we wouldn't have changed it for anything.

Lots of love, Eddie, George and Yorkie xxx

King of the Castle

Fiskardo is a lovely place to spend a few hours. About 15 minutes walk away is lovely secluded beach, where you can well and truly escape from the crowds, who are more interested in the swanky shops and cafes.

If you go in the other direction, you can walk out to the old Venetian lighthouse on the headland. It's in ruins now, having been replaced by a Victorian lighthouse, but it's great for exploring.

Greece hasn't gone Health and Safety mad, so it's possible to climb all the way to the top (mind you we did recently find a website that said it was possible, but not advisable, to climb the tower. The article was probably written by Brits!). We felt very safe climbing up and found a great Eddie sized porthole half way up which provided a great opportunity to have a rest and check out the view to sea. 

It didn't take long to get to the top and hopefully you see it's me at the top, by my profile of sticky out ears. It was wonderful to have such great 360 degree views, but my favourite was the view out across the harbour approach. I took a seat in the sun to watch all the sailing boats. Fortunately for me - not so good for the sailors - there wasn't much wind, so I wasn't in any danger of being blown off my tower top perch. 

Seeing all those boats heading out of harbour made me think of Dunkirk - not that I was there - and I truly knew what is is to be 'king of the castle'.

Lots of love Eddie, George and Yorkie xxx

A Bird's Eye View

So was our cocktail a hit or a miss?

Sadly, on grounds of taste, it was deemed the latter, although we did subsequently find out that we had won the best decorated cocktail, which was something of a consolation. I think we suffered from the fact that engineer Richard, wasn't available for the judging, as he had to work on somebody's broken engine. This meant that we had lost a beer man from the judges and ours was mostly a beer cocktail, after all. Thankfully our male minder liked our cocktail so it wasn't wasted.

All the flotilla enjoyed a wonderful beach picnic with lots of roast chicken and lovely salads. We got extra rowing practice when we realised that we'd forgotten to bring our own cutlery as instructed and had to row back to Milia to get some.

The next morning we sailed over to the very popular Cephalonian harbour of Fiskardo. As it is so popular we were advised to get there by lunchtime to get a mooring on the quay. We did this and got a prime mooring as you can see from our next picture. Doesn't Milia look a fine vessel?

When it came to early evening, and the briefing for the next day, we all gathered in the designated bar and wondered where our skipper, Ben, was. When he was spotted at the top of one of our boat's mast, we realised he was going to be late!   

As you see from our picture, he was a long way up, which is why he seems so small. It certainly isn't an easy life being lead crew. And this was all to fix a problem with a radio aerial. Mind you boat radios are very important which is why George and Yorkie practise regularly with ours.

We'll tell you about our leisure time in Fiskardo next time.

Lots of love, Eddie, George and Yorkie xxx

Bear with a Sore Head

 After a lovely time relaxing at our private beach, it was time to join up with the rest of the flotilla. We sailed across to Ithaca and went from one beautiful beach to another. Our lead crew had picked the charming Poli bay for our night's stay. It was rather special and very unspoilt. This was because there was no harbour and no shore facilities. This meant we had to raft up all the boats a stone's throw from the shore - I say we, although, as usual, it was our hard working lead crew doing all the hard work of tying up and placing anchors.

We did have some work of our own to do though. First we had to pump up our inflatable dinghy so we could row ashore for our flotilla beach picnic. Our paws were pumping madly for quite a long time. It was hard to find a flat surface to put the boat while we pumped, so we opted to use the roof.

It was then quite a logistical feat to get the inflated boat from the roof onto the water, bearing in mind that there are lots of ropes, rails, awnings, not least the boom, to get in the way.

With much pushing, shoving and squeezing we got our dinghy into the cockpit and from there, into the water. It was a good job it was made of tough material.

We then had a very important job to do. We had to make our cocktail to submit at the best cocktail competition that was taking place at the beach picnic. We had thought long and hard about our cocktail. We knew that the male members of our lead crew were beer men, but we were also aware that Katie, our hostie was more of an ouzo girl. We thought we would combine a beer cocktail (3 different types of Greek lagers) with a splash of ouzo. We'd had a trial run the day before and thought it tasted pretty good.

We knew there was a prize for the best decorated cocktail so we really went to town on the decoration and even included one of the turtles for which Zakynthos is famous. See Zak hanging from the top of our 'pitcher'.

We were really pleased with the end result and, even though the cocktail colour wasn't too appetising, we thought the decoration more than made up for it. We even served our cocktail in a cut down Loutraki water bottle, which we thought was a touch of genius, as our lead boat was called Loutraki. And what better name for our cocktail could we choose than 'Bear with a Sore Head'?

Did our lead crew judges like it or not? Find out next time. 

Lots of love, Eddie, George and Yorkie xxx