Happy Birthday to me!

I think I must be the luckiest person alive.

I get to live in the most beautiful place AND I live with the best husband of 41 years anyone could find.

This is what I woke up to, this morning:


And he sang!  (we didn't tape that though... for everyone's sake.)

click to see it bigger

We had decided that we'd take a mini-vacation, leave the house around 10:30 or 11 AM, and drive to one of our favorite beach/restaurant to have one of our most favorite -but infrequent- little luxuries, lobster with spicy spaghetti.  The Avra Fish Taverna is about an hour away from us, in the south part of the island, near Lake Korission, in the village of Prasoudi.  It's run by Ilias and the food is wonderful. (I wrote about it last July too!)

rolled up plastic awning not sky

We arrived around noon and got our favorite table and ordered something thirst quenching. Then we relaxed and drank in the view as well.

As we'd planned on first going for a swim and a bit of lying around on the beach, they were kind enough to hold our table for us.

yes, I AM having a good day.

T went back to the car and brought our gear and we went down for a splash.

Avra Restaurant from the water

I got in first and the water was lovely.

[Lots of tiny fish in the shallows (no frogs though...)]


We rinsed off the salt water with the fresh water shower, and laid on our sunbeds long enough to get a little color. (or in T's case a nice eerie glow-in-the-dark pink) 

Though I popped up the umbrella, it was a bit barn door/horse, if you know what I mean.

The breeze was lovely and almost cool, though it was hot inland (32C/90F) it was delightful at the water's edge (27C/80F).

two lobsters (sofrito sauce) split

spicy spaghetti (sofrito)

 We both felt a few pangs of hunger and we wandered back up the stairs to our table.  Our charming waitress brought  us each another beer and our bread and the Greek Salad we'd ordered, and 30 minutes later, our lunch arrived.


It was SO good.  We left nothing but shells.  The sofrito sauce on both the pasta and lobster was perfect and spicy.

We had complementary watermelon pieces for dessert and a small piece of some absolutely delicious (and sadly irresistible) apple cake.  We left vowing to never eat again. 

and a lot of dirty napkins! it's messy eating all the lobster bits!

We drove back through the center of the island arrived home at 4PM, and took a nap.  Lovely little mini vacation day...

I'm hoping for more of them!!