Kos March

A day on Kos in March 2003

Photo’s and report of a brief visit to Kos (07/03/2003 till 09/03/2003). Some kittens were born in the house of our daughter and son in law. Because they wanted to put some pictures of the kittens on internet and they don’t have a digital camera, we went to Kos to take the pictures.

A totally different image of Kos. Compare the deserted terraces with the image you have of Kos during the season.

It is always a special occasion flying with Olympic Airways. First, the plane is full with Greek people, quite different from the charters during the summertime. Second, the food is considerable better than at flight in summer. And third, already at the start you get the ‘Greek-feeling’ when all the instructions and announcements are in the Greek language. In a short version they tell everything also in English, but most of the time you can’t understand it. We think that the average employer in a restaurant in Kos speaks English much better than the crew at OA.

We left home at 9.30 am and after a stop in Athens of about 3 hours, we finally arrived at Kos airport at 21.30. We rent a car first. If I could pay with a credit-card? No, I don’t have a credit-card. I’ll pay in cash. At what time are you open at Sunday when I bring back the car? We are closed all day, but we could put the keys in a kind of mailbox. He surely needed the number of my credit-card in case I would bring back the car with an empty tank. Because I didn’t had such a card we had a problem. Fortunately we have been to Kos very often, so I asked him if he knew Stefanos of restaurant Edem. He happened to be a good friend of him. I suggested that he should talk to Stefanos if I would leave the car empty. He was willing to take the risk.

All the times we took the road at night-time from the airport to Kos or visa versa we were in a bus. You don’t pay so much attention then. Now I drove myself, I noticed the large number of hairpin bends. No lamp-posts, only the head-lights of the car. That means: slowly driving down-hill.

When we arrived at our daughter and son-in-law, we quickly unloaded the stuff we brought with us for them, brought the rest of out luggage to our hotel and went to a restaurant. In winter-time there aren’t many restaurants open, but if you know the way, you won’t starve.
We enjoyed our dinner in a good restaurant till 1 o’clock at night. At 2 o’clock wen went to bed: exhausted of the trying journey.
Because we would stay for only 1 whole day, we get up early the next morning to see something of Kos-town. The hotel didn’t had breakfast so we went to the inner part of the town to a place that is open all year and were they sell tiropita’s. After breakfast we took a walk through familiar Kos-town. The day before the weather was quite good, dry and some sunshine. Today is was cloudy and some rain now and then. The temperature was ok, about 12-13 degrees. We walked for about one hour and saw only 50-60 people (Greek). Sometimes they stared at you: he, tourists? A deserted Kos at 10 o’clock in the morning. Of all those people we knew 6 of them. So we stopped and talked several times. They all thought we were crazy: going to Kos for just one week-end. We hardly recognised the people we knew. They were looking different in summer-time. Now they were wearing old cloths and the had beards. If you would meet them like this in summer, you would turn around.
Greek friends told us once that you die on Kos during winter (because you are bored to death). We didn’t mind for just one day, but I think it will be difficult over there during winter when you have nothing to do.

In the midday we did some shopping by car at a big supermarket (on the road to the airport). It was as less fun as doing shopping in Holland. Then went to a friend in Platani to have a coffee. Made some pictures of the cats and had dinner in the evening. We went to bed early (22.00) because at 7.15 am out plane would leave. Fortunately our journey back went quicker than the outward journey because we have to wait only 40 minutes in Athens for our plane to Amsterdam. At 13.00 we were at home.

It was very nice we have seen Kos from an other side, but for only one day the trip is too exhausting. If we do it again it will be for 3 days at least.