Hellas and Kefa's
I've never really considered Greece as a destination for a holiday and now I can't understand why I would ever have had any reservations. Perhaps snobbery that to get there I would have to go with a tour operator. Perhaps because of the reputation of resorts being full of Brits getting wasted on Ouzo. "Street's like a jungle, so call the police" as Blur once described the 18-30 phenomenon "....following the herds, down to Greece".
The southern area of Kefalonia, however, seemed to appeal more to "families, couples and coffin-dodgers" as the brochure put it very concisely. Mainly wandering from pool to bed to beach, our week was interrupted only to go on a coach tour of the island where our lovely guide (with a slightly over eager jaw) kept talking about "kef's" (kefalonians) which I kept mis-hearing as 'kaffir's', given her South African accent. This, along side our rep who pronounced everything in his broad Lancastrian delivery - eg. Myrtos beach becomes Mooor-toss - and the owner of the winery Co-op who gave us a presentation in his native and rather thick Yorkshire dialect, made us question exactly where we were. Soon though, we would back at the poolside bar and reminded we were of course somewhere between Slough and Essex.
It is a wonderfully luxurious thing to only have to worry about the amount of sun screen you have on, when the next drink is coming and what page you were on in your book. We occasionally went down to the sea and swam with the fishes, literally, which was incredible. The clarity of the water and vibrancy of colours keeping us wondering if we were hallucinating. Shoals of silver fish would swim along side, sometimes a lone rainbow coloured one too, occasionally we'd bump into the pale blue legs of a Welshman which would keep us sober.
It is interesting to watch family dynamics around the pool and to view Brits as what we have become - with our beer bellies, voluminous knee length shorts (presumably to disguise the bellies), an inability to keep volume levels at a private level, a novice's understanding of the service industry (smiling and thanking waiting staff regardless of service), a novice's understanding of sun protection, a penchant for shit entertainment (I'm surprised no one was watching the X factor after the football results were watched with fervour), addictive phone typing - even on holiday.
Our trip to the incredibly beautiful yet incredibly lothian-sounding Nidri on the island of Lefkada was a great day out. We had another mouthy guide, but this time who had enough wrong with her to warrant much fun poking (and we visibly weren't the only ones). The tour was based around Onassis (Aristotle, husband to Jackie) who we didn't know a lot about but despite being the 'hero' of the tour we could read between the lines to tell he was a corrupt, capitalist bastard. Post holiday research confirmed our suspicions.
Melanie, who introduced herself by barking orders at us about times to be back on the boat and threatening remarks about, what Laura heard as, the "thought police" (but turned out to be the port police) didn't endear. She read from a script as if she was playing a tragic, worn out stewardess using that false intonation that ascends at the end of a sentence to suggest her tale is not boring despite it being the thousandth time she'd read it. Unfortunately, ending a tragic story with upward inflection is deeply insulting even if it left us in the asile with laughter "...she died of a kidney failure" ".....assassinated". The best bit was her telling us about the film The Sheik and mispronouncing it Sheek. Pissing ourselves we definitely were.
The beaches were amazing and I reckon you could easily write half a series of a package holiday sitcom after a visit.