Our stay in Dimitsana was relaxed and really enjoyable; we mainly wandered around experiencing an incredible hillside village and the only genuine tourist thing we did was to take the drive down to the Prodhomos Monastery and walk down to see the incredible "homes in the mountain wall" which I presume are or were monks cells but time constraints mean I haven't actually gotten around to checking that out......That's another reason why I look forward to Liane's blogs as she is so much better than me at finding things out.....and then also
remembering them.....I have a tendency to forget things rather quickly and/or misspeak constantly.....Actually Gwendoline and Liane are constantly teasing me as I continually refer to my IPad as my camera and my camera as my phone.....and incidentally I don't even have a phone so there is no reason for that.....I don't want to admit to old age induced memory lapses but really have no other excuse! The drive down to the monastery was memorable for a number of reasons; the road was off the hairy scary variety with switchback after switchback of narrow roads leading down the mountain and said road was covered in places by fallen rocks scattered all over the place. We also had the rather disconcerting experience of having our hire car attacked by a dog......then just after we escaped from his jaws, and he was full on jumping up, barking and generally trying to eat us, we came across the beginnings of what turned out to be a long and scattered "meandering up the mountain all over the road" herd of goats.....so we figure that as we didn't actually see a goat herder the dog was perhaps it, and was waiting for his goats to come home and saw us as threatening......boots on the other foot there mate! Other than the obvious beauty of the village itself the thing I will remember most about our stay there in Dimitsana undoubtedly be our host Aris. I told Liane that I had left my last story at our arrival in There and was leaving the incredible story of Aris and his special brand of hospitality to her, which I will.....but I can't help just wanting to share in this writing what I said to Liane and Gwendols about him which is that I constantly thought of Mum and Dad back in the pubs and motels......Dad is so social and friendly and helpful and Mum is doing so much more behind the scenes but the guests hardly would see her at all......and I could just imagine Elena (Aris' wife) out in the kitchen working and saying to him "for goodness sake Aris, leave them alone to eat their breakfast in peace!".....

(L)We had asked for breakfast at 9am.. well actually we said 8 but Aris said "8!!!! 8.30-9???" which reminded me of myself when guests ask for a 6 am breakfast. We walked into the breakfast room right as the town clock was chiming 9 am and Aris was sitting waiting for us. There was a fabulous array of goods on offer, boiled eggs, 3 different types of bread, fruit, yoghurt, honey, yummy cakes, savoury little pettit fours (with tomato, basil and oregano), pots of tea and coffee and other things too. Aris hovered but did eventually disappear to the kitchen for a few minutes. When it looked like we were almost finished he brought us over books to look at of his village and things to see and do. He printed off a map and gave us detailed instructions on what to do/see and how to get there then after we thanked him profusely he wanted to tell us all over again! He also got out a map of the Peloponnese and told us that we just had to go to Olympia, no-one should come to Greece and not go there, it's up there with the Acropolis he said. Much to his disgust, as the monastery is closed between 1 and 5, we had a lazy morning around town and headed off to the monastery around 3.30. Once again trekking up and down mountains!! I must admit when we returned we went in through the garage so as to avoid being waylaid once again by our ever helpful host!! Dinner was going to be an early affair so we headed down to the town around 7ish, today is Gwendolines day to make the final choice and she picked a lovely little place. Unfortunately the lady serving wasn't quite ready to cook as her boyfriend hadn't arrived to start the grill, we would have been happy with just greek salad, tzatziki and other cold appetizers, but she offered us cheese, bread and wine and said "George will come, we wait together"... so we waited, and waited and ordered some tzatziki and waited and ordered some salad and waited and finally at around 9pm George arrived so by this time we were ready to go but had to order something as she'd been on the phone to George several times.... I wish we knew what she'd been saying to him but I'm sure he got an earful! The girls ordered pork souvlaki and said it was worth the wait, Deb doesn't like pork at all but said it was amazing. 8 am breakfast ordered for the morning as Aris told us we should get an early start to get to Olympia, and he did have another couple that asked for an 8 am breakfast so we think he wanted to get it all done together!!