Sunday Night out in Stroumpi...

It was much cooler today, in fact at times I thought we might get some serious rain, so the cats were back to their normal 'aggravate one another until it is too hot mode' which meant that my poor plant (called Laura) came in for a right old bashing.  We might not have got any rain but we later found out that Wheely Helen and Alistair who live down the road right on the Droushia boundary got half and hour of torrential rain!  Looking back on the blog a year ago I see that the weather had a funny blip at around the same time last year as well.  The garden would probably do with a soak - it would certainly save me from watering!

Our neighbours Sean and Sharon and Sharon's daughter Katya were leaving today - we are going to miss not having them up the road.  We left them to it as Sean said he wanted to be on the road for the airport no later than 11.30am but we think it was more like 12.30pm by the time they got themselves packed up and away.  They have done a lot of work to their house this time and had a right old sort out and Sean was impressed that I let loose my inner pikey when I asked him if I could liberate the old pram he had put next to the dustbin!  I decided it would look nice planted up and placed on one of our decking areas so that is what I did.  We are guessing that they managed to catch their flight as they didn't come back but we bet it was only by the skin of their teeth!!

We were having a quiet day and a sports-fest as there was the final part of the Tour de France (well done Bradley Wiggins and Team Sky), the British Open and the German Grand Prix all to keep us occupied.  I have never watched the Tour de France before but this last leg was really really exciting and we were glad that we had chance to catch the end of it before going out - yet again!!!

We had been going to a concert in Tala this evening with Wheely Helen and Alistair and Craft Jane and Mark but it was cancelled because the singer had a bad throat so we decided we had to do something else instead and John suggested trying the shack in Stroumpi which has no name but which we will refer to as 'We are Open'.  John saw a big sign outside one day and thought it was the shack's name but it was the Greek word for 'We are Open'.

It is a shack which serves (as the sign says) grilled things like Souvlakia and Sheftalia and on Wednesdays and Fridays there is Kleftiko.  Alistair had been in to try and ascertain what we might get on a Sunday and received a telephone call from the owner to say it would be Kleftiko so at least we could do a comparison between them and Fitos.

This was definitely a no-frills venue with a scenic view of the main road to Polis!  Unfortunately Jane and Mark misunderstood the brief and pitched up in Droushia first thinking we were going to Christos's!  Still nothing spoiled as we sat under a very very ancient vine watching the world go by.  These places are a must if we are ever to improve our Greek as the staff and the clientele spoke little to no English (this is good!!).  We are all of the opinion that for some reason (maybe the credit crunch) these sort of simple ethnic eating places are on the up.  It must have something to do with the fact that you get a good wholesome freshly cooked meal for about €10 a head and apparently if you have a takeaway from Fitos it is only €5 - at that price you must wonder whether or not it is worth putting the oven on!  One of the other diners kept disappearing to his car and bringing back things for us to try - he referred to them as 'original' but later we realised he meant 'organic' but as the Cypriots tend to spray everything there are obviously different levels of organic-ness out here!!

Once again we had a very pleasant evening and are busy planning our next get together - we girlies will meet up on Wednesday week when the Droushia Ladies partake of a light lunch at Christos's so at least Jane will get to go there!