The Adventures of Samantha & Paul

As with our trip to Sozopol, Bul­garia, I’m tak­ing a quick moment out of a few days to recant our recent tails. Those lucky enough to find this rare and valu­able hard copy will note the delight­ful Molyvos image on the front of this book.

Rewind­ing to last Wednes­day, I left the office amidst a flurry of work for two weeks, lug­ging my suit­case behind. In West Ewell, after cross­ing Lon­don, we ate Sam’s risotto of “things left in the fridge”, I watched Man Utd ner­vously and luck­ily win the Cham­pi­ons League against Chelsea whilst Sam hur­riedly tried to remem­ber all the things she might for­get. Come 3:45am, the ser­e­nade of my phone alarm assaults us and throws us out of bed, div­ing into suit­cases to triple check our tick­ets and pass­ports. — before being whisked to Gatwick by Sam’s mum for our 7:00am flight to Miti­lene, the Les­bos cap­i­tal, via First Choice air­lines. We booked the hol­i­day and flights through First Choice two months in advance for £850, choos­ing to stay at the Sun Rise Hotel, next to Molyvos, in North Lesbos.

I shall not get into our labo­ri­ous process of decid­ing which island/resort to visit in Greece, but we decided on Les­bos for its veg­e­ta­tion, size, rel­a­tively ow tourism, direct flights and cul­ture. The Sun Rise Hotel was also highly rated on Trip Advi­sor (other can­di­dates were the Olive Press Hotel (too noisy), The Sea Horse (no pool) and a cou­ple of oth­ers (Petra, Anaxos, too far from the beau­ti­ful Molyvos).

On land­ing we dis­carded our jumpers, breathed in the hot air and set about across the moun­tain­ous ter­rain of Les­bos, via taxi, to the north of the island — about an hours drive, at a speedy pace with horn honk­ing at junc­tions and over­tak­ing of one handed motor­cy­clists that were tex­ting on their phones. We checked in and pro­ceeded up the 100-odd steps to our room, with a glo­ri­ous North Lesvos sea view, and Turkey clear in our sights over the water. The room is nice, excel­lent for sleep­ing and look­ing after our clothes, which is all we need it for. The Sun Rise Hotel offers a full and half board food ser­vice, we got the break­fasts but opted out of the evening meals — we like our restau­rants! A good choice con­sid­er­ing their food is over priced and not very good (we sam­pled a chicken à la crème, a tuna salad and a burger on our first day — though not again since — Sam also made the Chicken Crème mis­take in Sozopol).

I’m cur­rently sit­ting by their pool, bask­ing in the hot sun, as I write this — it looks so refresh­ing and the sound of the water foun­tain is sooth­ing. Every now and then a House Mar­tin swoops down to take a quick drink. Sam’s read­ing her book “The Lol­lipop Shoes” and her sun burn has mostly gone down, though I am sure it will quickly return. I am read­ing Mark Danielewski’s “House of Leaves”. We’ve played some table ten­nis but hand to eye co-ordination isn’t Sam’s strong point.