Eat Your Carrots

We Had Visitors

We had visitors this weekend - our friends Helga & Walter from Belgium. I first met them seven years ago in York and then a little while later in Belgium, having first made contact vis the travel site VirtualTourist. They're a lovely couple and we all get along very well. I couldn't believe that it had been 6 years since we last saw them - it just shows how time flies.

They've just been over to The Lakes for a week of touring on their motorbike, though unfortunately the weather was unkind to them. A couple of weeks earlier they'd been to Santorini, and as we had also just returned from Greece it seemed only natural to go to Kaminaki, my favourite Greek restaurant that's outside of Greece!
The restaurant lived up to its usual high standards and all of the food was first rate. It was a little inconvenient that they brought everything at once rather than in the starters/mains way that we'd asked for it, but I'll forgive them this as everything else was so good. It was quite fun trying to balance little plates here and there and make a bit more room for the other dish that just arrived...
We had:

• Tzatziki
• Hummous
• Htipiti - spicy feta cheese dip
• Giant Beans - my favorite!
• Spanokopitta
• Papoutsakia - stuffed aubergines
• Fava - Santorini's split-pea puree
• Greek Salad
• Bottle of Santorini white wine
• Galaktoboureko - good, but not as good as on Tinos!
• Greek Yogurt, honey & walnuts

It was a pity that Walter was feeling a bit unwell, the result perhaps of some "pie" that he had eaten a day or so earlier, so he wasn't able to enjoy the meal to its fullest. They insisted on paying too, for which we thank them once again.

The next day they set off for home, via the Yorkshire coast. I wonder when and where we'll meet again - who knows, it may be in Greece one year.

New Favourite Website

OK, OK, I know I haven't written a thing about my recent (amazing) trip to the Cyclades, but as a post-script to that visit I've got a new favourite website. It's a bit geeky perhaps, and not of general interest to many, but it is an amazing piece of work and shows just what can be done with the Google Maps API.

The site is MarineTraffic.com and it uses Google Maps to show the locations of ships. Primarily at the moment it's limited to Europe, more particularly the Med and more particularly the Aegean. But that's perfect for me! It does cover areas beyond the Aegean to an extent, and even shows ships on the Rhine at Dusseldorf, Duisberg etc.
It's pretty extensive and you can click on a ship to find out more information about it (destination, ETA, vessel specs & photos, trace of where it's been) and you can upload your own photos if you have some (and I have some!).
I could play on it all day, watching to see where our favourite ferries - Blue Star Superferry II, Naxos, Paros and Ithaki; Hellenic Seaways High Speed 3; ANES Simi II and Aegli; King Saron and a host of others we've come to know and love.
It's a bit processor intensive mind, especially when zoomed out just due to the number of ships it has to draw!
Have a look, at least once.

Passport Tickets Money

Usually when you go away on holiday the mantra of the three things you have to remember is "passport, tickets, money". Not for us this year. Thanks to those uselessly inefficient wallies at Kosmar we don't have to worry about tickets this year, as they've forgotten to send us any. Instead we have to join yet another queue at the airport to pick up our tickets there, before joining the queue to check in. Bleary-eyed at 3am, joining more queues than I really ought to is not something I relish.

8 Weeks Later

Good grief, where did the time go. It's almost two months since I last posted here which means that baby Alexander is eight weeks old now.

As you can see from the photo he's quite relaxed in his uncle Steven's arms and I'm so relaxed with him that I can hold him and watch TV both at the same time!





He's got his "duckling costume" on in this one. It could be the first and only time he wears it as he's growing so fast he's almost too big for it already!












Here he is in his Jungle Gym, he already likes trying to bash the little animals (he'll have to stop that before he meets Charley!).





We go on holiday at the end of this week for two whole weeks. That's a fifth of Alexander's life! It's like someone going away on holiday for nine years of my life! I wonder how much he'll have changed when we get back.