Pension Arsenis

We are parked this evening in the car park of Pension Arsenis in the shadow of The Meteora Monasteries. We were greeted on arrival by the owner who seems to be a "character" and repeats everything he says several times. He told us that his mother would arrive later and cook us the best food we have had in Greece! So we took the time to have a little siesta and were awoken by him shouting through the window "Hello British, Hello British, Pork or Chicken, Pork or Chicken?" For the next few minutes the conversation comprised of,

"Chicken, please" ""Chicken?" "Yes please". "Chicken?" "Yes please, Chicken". "Chicken?" "YES PLEASE, CHICKEN!!!!!" "Ok Chicken". "7 o'clock ok?" "Ok". "7 o'clock ok?" "OK!!!"

I don't think we'll need our glasses to read the menu tonight.

Meanwhile four French motorhomes have turned up in convoy and parked nose to bumper in a line and they are all immaculately clean. Showroom condition. How do they do it? Our van is pretty filthy now but we haven't been anywhere to wash it but we've noticed wherever we have been in Europe and North Africa that the French always have spotlessly clean vans. Very strange.

We've had our meal, Greek salad, barbecued chicken and chips and a half litre of sweet red wine. Hmmm, ok I guess. But we did better than the French. There are about eight vans parked here and we were all given our "dining time", ours was seven o'clock and the French were told the same time. They arrived at eight o'clock after aperitifs in their vans and the barbecue was dead so............ No dinner for the French! Son of Arsene had already told us they would not be able to eat because they were late but we hung around a little while to see the reaction when they arrived. Bearing in mind he's not running a full-on restaurant here, just him, his mum and a guy on the barbie I didn't have a great deal of sympathy for the latecomers, but their faces were a picture when they finally got the message that they'd missed dinner:)

So, tomorrow we visit the Monasteries, well, not all of them. I think there are six which may be a bit of Monastery overload but we definitely want to see the Grand Meteoro and maybe one other on the route. We'll save the rest for next time. Then the plan is to drive over the pass through the Pindos mountains to Metsovo, stop the night, if we can find somewhere to park, and then on to Ioannina the next day. After that we'll take two or three days to drive back to Thessalonika so our friends at Zampetas can fit the air suspension to the van.

 

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