Holiday apartment

Ok ok, I know I said that I wouldn't write about my holiday very much but I just couldn't resist the opportunity to show off just a little bit - you know, cause I'm such a nice person like that!

This year, my family and I are doing our holiday slightly differently. We have been to Greece twice before and both times we have stayed in the same hotel, basically for the entire time. We ate in the hotel, went to the beach in the hotel and spent all of our evenings in the hotel.

But this year we fancied a change. So my dad (who books the holidays in the household) booked us two little apartments (one for my parents, and one for my sister and I) in a hotel, though it isn't really a hotel. We are less than a stone's throw from the beach where around 40 restaurants are found which we choose from every night to eat. It's pretty darn perfect.

So I thought I would share with you some pictures of the apartment that my sister and I share (any mess is hers - I'm trying to keep it tidy!). I would estimate that it's about 5mx5m in size, but it's very high ceilinged so there is an extra level which is where all the beds are. There is also a little terrace area, but it doesn't really get much sun because it's right up against another building. There's a little bathroom downstairs as well, which takes some space from the main living area and some space from the terrace. 

I don't know whether any of that made sense, but hopefully you can just figure it out from the pictures!

I'm absolutely loving having my own little apartment, despite my sister being a nightmare of a roommate (don't tell her that!). She's very nice to share with actually, we just have different ideas on what tidy means! I'm having a great time though, pretending to be a little housewife doing all the washing up and everything!

I'm also reading furiously, as well as splashing and splishing about in the sea and getting into very big arguments with the air conditioning. It's ok though, we're friends now!

Last night we went to this amazing and beautiful restaurant called The Home (We're going there again at some point, so I'll take some photos and write a proper post on it then!) and there was a huge powercut and everything on the coast went out. It was really nice though, we ate pudding by candlelight!

Anyway, I shall stop my rambling now and bid you adeiu!

Holiday Holiday HOLIDAY

Right at this very moment, I am sitting on my bed while I am supposed to be packing, listening to my parents run around searching for a lost passport and feeling intimidated by the ominous bottle of sun cream staring at me.

Now from all of those clues and the title of this post, you should work out that I am going on holiday tomorrow! That's right, I'm going to be in Greece, livin la vida loca! WHOO!

This holiday is going to be slightly different to when I went to Italy because 1) I'm going with my family, 2) There is absolutely nothing on the agenda besides lying on a beach all day and everyday and 3) I will not be writing about it because of this.

Although, saying that, it is more similar in some respects then I am happy about. For example, I have to get up at 4am tomorrow!

I don't know what the wifi situation is like in our hotel (though I would imagine it isn't particularly good), and to be honest I'm going on holiday so I don't really want to be worrying about writing the whole time - you know, because I've been writing sooooo much recently... *guilty face*

However I have downloaded about one million books onto my kindle because I always end up doing endless amounts of reading when I go away, so maybe we'll finally get somewhere with the book challenge that I started so many months ago!

And as always, I will make the seemingly empty promise of a lot of posts when I get back! So look forward to that!

See you soon!!! (and when we do meet again, hopefully I will be beautifully tanned and wonderfully relaxed!)

Italy Day 5 - Olive Oil Farm, Solfatara and Home

We awoke on our last day in Italy ready and waiting to set off on the planned activities before heading home.

After breakfast, we packed up our rooms and made sure we had all of our cases with us (I sadly lost a very useful makeup brush), loaded everything onto the coach and set off to an olive oil farm on Mount Vesuvius.

Because of the eruptions that have happened over the years, the ash has settled into the soil and made it very fertile and very good for growing things. One of Italy's main produce and exports is in fact olive oil. At first, I really wasn't looking forward to this activity, I thought that it would be really dull and not something that I would be at all interested in - but I was actually really wrong! When we got there it was really interesting.

Like the day before in the morning, it was a lot cooler and was a nice break from the sun especially when the people at the farm took us into their olive farm. They showed us how they had these large nets which when the time was right they would unravel and shake the tree causing all of the olives to be caught in the nets. They also told us that olives are very important in Italy, and therefore so are the olive trees. Apparently it is actually a crime to cut down an olive tree, and if one was to fall down, for example in a storm, someone would have to be sent to confirm that the tree did die of natural causes with no human interaction whatsoever. It was also very interesting because they don't just grow olives, but oranges and lemons too, however on a much smaller scale. They had found a way to genetically modify some trees, so that half of the branches would grows lemons and the other half would grow oranges.

 

We were then taken to see the old fashioned methods of making olive oil. I can't remember exactly how it was done, but a donkey was strapped to a machine and walked around and around in a circle, moving the machine so that the olives would be squeezed and pressed and filtered.

We were then taken to see the modern methods of creating olive oil. The method was very similar to what it had been, but without a donkey and with a lot of mechanics involved.

We then went into the olive oil shop. There was so much olive oil, and so many different flavours. We had the opportunity to taste some, and there were about 20 different bottles on this little table all with different flavours and designed to go with different dishes. There were also some baskets of bread to dip in the oil. However, because everyone crowded around this table, and I'm not actually a very big fan of olive oil, so I didn't end up sampling any of it - I just ate my little piece of bread!

I did try to get some artsy shots of the shop.

 

We then went outside to wait, where I spotted some sewing machines which completely made my day!

And Alice, Leah and myself decided to take a super cool foot trio picture. No prizes for guessing that I'm the one with the least sensible shoes on! But come on, you've got to love my funky red nail varnish!

After we left the olive oil farm, we all hopped back onto the coach and made the very long drive to Solfatara, a very small supervolcano. It was during this particular drive that one of my all time favourite trip moments happened. About half way through, I popped my head up over the seats to look at everyone else, and pretty much everyone was asleep. I found it hilarious that in a coach with 26 teenagers, there was only about 3 awake!

Now for those of you who don't know, a supervolcano is not really like a regular volcano, because it's a lot lot lot bigger. Not that you didn't get that from the name or anything. And instead of being a kind of cone shape that we expect volcanoes to be, supervolcanoes are more of a sunken dip in the group because the magma chamber is just too large. The most famous and largest one is in Yellowstone National Park in the USA. It is predicted when that erupts it will demolish pretty much everything around it, lower the global temperature by 10 degrees which will then lead to worldwide starvation and around 2 billion deaths in total. Oh, and we're overdue for an eruption... so happy thoughts everyone!

However, the one that we went to visit, Solfatara is a very small supervolcano, although it's quite amusing to think of it like that.

I actually found this bit really really interesting, though many people really didn't like it. Because of the heat in the magma chamber below our feet, where there are cracks, even of the smallest amount, it lets up steam that we can see on the ground. It has a lot of sulphur in it, and incase you didn't know... sulphur gas isn't a particularly nice smell. Actually, it's down right horrible and many people could stomach it. I found it ok though.

You can see the sulphur in the ground, the little yellow bits.

It was also quite incredible because our tour guide showed us that when you drop something heavy on the ground like a large rock or when you jump, it echos, making the ground sound completely hollow. It isn't of course, I think that our tour guide said it was something to do with the minerals in the soil.

There were 3 steam vents, and they were called the queen, the princess, and I can't remember what the other one was called, but they were amazing to look at, even if a bit pongy to get too close to.

There were also these chamber thingys that had been built, I guess to try an enclose the steam, but you were allowed to go in them. I did, and it was like a very bad eggy smelling sauna. I won't be taking it up as apart of my beauty routine!

We then went and saw a well, though unfortunately I can't remember the significance of it... oopsie!

Lastly, we saw the huge bubbling mud bath. Our tour guide told us that it was about 200 degrees in it, and it wasn't actually the mud that was bubbling, but the water. The mud was just all around and underneath it, making it look like it was bubbling mud.

We then set off, and caught up with everyone else who had bailed on account of the smell. Puny insects. But believe me, we all began to feel a little queasy after the long coach ride to the airport with everyone smelling of sulphur gas! However, we had been pre warned and so we all had a change of clothes for the airport and the journey home. I can't imagine the pleasure of the other passengers if we hadn't been so well prepared and wonderfully organised!

We got to the airport, did some shopping in the ridiculously overpriced dutyfree, got on our plane, and before we knew it we were landing in Heathrow once more. We got another coach, the last we would get on for a while, and headed for school where are parents were waiting to pick us up. It was quite amusing however, because my friend Leah had clearly gotten very tired and it all suddenly caught up with her and she went really delirious, and acted like the was drunk. I had to carry her bag and everything!

We finally got back to school about 11:30pm English time, I met up with my parents and talked non-stop for about an hour and then fell into bed and stayed there for quite a while!