{"id":100525,"date":"2020-10-22T12:40:40","date_gmt":"2020-10-22T11:40:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/?p=100525"},"modified":"2020-10-22T12:40:40","modified_gmt":"2020-10-22T11:40:40","slug":"kos-christmas-and-coming-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/presenters\/alison-keenan\/kos-christmas-and-coming-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Kos, Christmas and coming home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Possibly one of the more unusual places for me to be writing my blog… thousands of feet above Paris and travelling at over 500 miles an hour! It\u2019s a relatively short flight to Kos, and I always find it hard to believe I\u2019ve been away when I\u2019m on my way home, but looking back through the photographs and chatting with Colin, I think it\u2019s fair to say we\u2019ve packed a lot into the last nine days, and feel exceptionally lucky to have been away.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

We were originally booked to go to Turkey, but when the quarantine restrictions came in some weeks back, we thought we\u2019d lose the holiday or have to postpone as so many other folk have had to do. Luckily for us, the travel company managed to find an alternative holiday on Kos, a Greek island we\u2019d not been to before. My godmother stayed there 30 years ago when they only had tiny hotels and tavernas, and she and her husband Ian cycled everywhere. It was, as she told us, completely unspoiled and beautiful. To be fair, I imagine if she ever came back, she wouldn\u2019t find it all that different. Of course, mask-wearing and constant hand-sanitising have changed the world for all of us, and it\u2019s the same in Greece but I\u2019m getting more used to it now and fully appreciate that it makes sense. I\u2019ll have to get used to wearing my visor at work again though. Last time I wore it, I forgot I had it on and shoved my sandwich into the front of it, missing my mouth all together! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Thanks so much for your kind words and messages on the last blog, and it was good to catch up with all that you\u2019ve been going through too. I was sorry though to know that Covid has upset so many plans – travel, birthdays, even weddings – but I guess we just keep having to keep looking forwards and hoping\u2026<\/p>\n\"\"\n

Because it was so last minute, I tried to take less with me this time (never easy!) but managed to leave my prescription glasses and my Bose<\/strong><\/a> in-ear headphones on the plane! Thanks to Dan from TUI, they were waiting for me at the airport when we flew home, but I was glad I had my audiobooks to fall back on as I can\u2019t easily read without them. The weather was a little mixed, but I\u2019ve still managed to absorb a fair bit of vitamin D, which will hopefully stand me in good stead for my DEXA scan on Thursday! Our hotel was right by a lovely sandy beach, quite unlike many of the other Greek islands we\u2019ve visited over the years, where the beaches are normally quite stony and although it\u2019s late October, the sea was still warm and great to swim in. We hired a car for a couple of days and drove to a fabulous coastline near Kamari – Bubble Beach as the locals call it. It curved gently with a really long stretch of very soft sand and we walked pretty much the entire way around – it was just beautiful.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

The island is fairly small, but towards the middle of it you\u2019ll find the most enormous castle that\u2019s stood there for over 600 years ago. Antimachia Castle was built in stages, the first part constructed in 1319 as a fortified settlement for the islanders to live in.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

It certainly served its purpose when 25,000 residents fought off the 1457 Ottoman invasion. With the exception of two small chapels both built in the 1800\u2019s, the other dwellings inside the solid walls are now just rubble, and apart from a few other tourists, the only other things we saw were the wild goats, but it had a definite sense of history and peace about it.<\/p>\n