Ciao and a very late Happy New Year !

Well after 16 days without running water, the home owners came back and we were relieved of our house sitting duties. We both loved Bulgaria, especially to have Denise to visit. She left on the 30th and we spent New Years Eve at the house with a lovely Bulgarian wine, and there were even some fireworks in the village for us to watch from the terrace at midnight.

We had a lovely evening with Peter and Lidia on the 1st and they kindly let us shower and do some much needed laundry. Unfortunately I used all the hot water with my shower so poor James had to have a cold shower. I fell over on the way home and managed to shred my knee and my jeans but was amazed to pick up a new pair of jeans in town for the bargain price of £3.50 - and they are the right (short) leg length !!

On the 2nd Candy and Duncan came home, we had a lovely dinner with them and moved on the next day - straight to Devin, which is a mountain town and a fabulous 5* hotel with a great spa and swimming pool so we were able to relax and get super clean !!

We then spent the next full day driving from Bulgaria to the Greek port of Igoumenitsa and then took the 1am ferry across to Brindisi in Italy (on the heel) - it was a calmer crossing than we expected but only a cold tiled floor to sleep on and the roll on / roll off was a complete shambles with each lorry reversing off one at a time. A later start but we headed off and decided to do another full day drive to bring us right to the toe of Italy where we had a night in a hotel and got the morning ferry across to Sicily. Sicily is stunning, but a lot bigger than we expected - we stayed last night at Taormina which is a spectacular cliff top town. James excelled himself with our room - we had a huge terrace in the sunshine with the sea to our left and a clear and stunning view of Mount Etna, the volcano, on the right.

After relaxing on the terrace in the sun, we headed out down the winding streets and steps into the town for dinner. Greece and Italy are famed for their fabulous cuisine and we have managed to have the worst of it ! We had a terrible 'Greek plate' in Santorini which was a selection of the worst food, with the cheapest ingredients, served lukewarm. Last night I had a lasagne that bore all the hallmarks of being slopped straight out of a Findus tray ! We had a lovely Italian vino to get us through the dinner trauma and then headed back to the room, where we proceeded to get completely lost amongst all the back roads and ended up wandering for about an hour and a half before finally following the zig zag road all the way back to the villa.

Today we have driven up to Mount Etna (which is currently smoking so you can't get near the top) we walked on a smaller crater which was last active in 1986 and then we drove across to Palermo where we are staying for a couple of nights before heading back to the mainland.

Love to you all x x