Wednesday, 9 April 2014

Travel Journal Easter in Crete -the Food

The food here is plentiful and very lovely, I fear some of my recent weightloss has been ruined by the scrumptious-ness! So a post all on its own here's the food low down

Breakfast is served until 10.30, a vast array of choice, continental salads,cooked meat and fruits, cereals, pastries, crepes, eggs of many varieties, full cooked breakfast, and freshly made juice and smoothies, along with breads and yoghurts. 

We love breakfast here and enjoy spending time relaxing and chatting over a nice cuppa and a leisurely breakfast.

Lunch

Served from 12.30-3.30pm You've two choices on a lunchtime, Tex Mex (open most days) for Burger, enchiladas, chilli, nachos, salads and a small desert selection. The Tex Mex has a limited menu but the food is freshly cooked and served to you so it's a nice place for a more relaxed lunch. Next is the main restaurant with a selection of hot dishes, pizza, grilled meats, traditional Greek gyros, pasta  and a huge salad selection there's also a big desert selection as well as nuts and cheese. 


My ultimate favourite from lunch is the eggplant salad served grilled chicken with Greek salad and pita absolutely gorgeous!



Dinner

Served between 6.30-9.30pm in most restaurants The dinner restaurants  included in the hotel package are :

MainRestaurant 

Serving themed buffet, salads, grilled meat or fish, breads, soups and deserts.

Thai

With a reasonable selection of Thai Starters, a choice of about 10 main courses including beef,pork, chicken, fish and veggie dishes and then a choice of around 5 deserts

Red Saffron

This is based on a traditional Greek taverna so you are given a mixed Meze starter including bread, salad, dips, hot dishes and baked cheese, then a Greek buffet with lots of grilled meat and some traditional moussaka, stifado and vegetable dishes followed by a desert meze. It's very lovely but I would have like to see a bit more salad, and Greek dips available with the main course as the meat really needed something to accompany it. 

Tex Mex

A larger selection available on an evening including hot starters, soups and salads alongside main courses like rack of ribs, steak and swordfish as well as some traditional Mexican dishes, there's a limited selection of deserts as well. This is a waited restaurant not buffet so it's a nice break from the constant back and forth with the kids. Its very tasty and the meat dishes especially are lovely quality and taste yummy, staff are very friendly and happy to accommodate specific requests. 

There are also, Al Dente, Hot Stone Grill and  Sugiyama Japanese  al a carte restaurants available at an extra cost to your package. You do however get a 15€ discount pp against the menu price

All the food we've had has been lovely and the service in most cases absolutely brilliant, some improvements we woul like to see would be 

A snack bar so that you could just grab a sandwich at lunch instead of having a proper sit down meal.

Tea and coffee in pots on the table at breakfast, this happens in Tenerife Sensatori and really adds a luxury edge to breakfast.

The childrens menu is limited to nuggets and burgers etc in most restaurants so it would be nice to be told that you can order a child's meal from the adult menu, as some people who've not been before don't like to ask. Its never been any trouble when we've requested it so it would be useful if this was on the childrens menu or explained at the beginning of a meal.

The reservation system is a faff on, basically you queue at a booking station, which operates from 10am to 10pm there's often no availability and people miss out. I'm not sure what the solution is  but I think Thomson need to look at the system. 

Tea and Coffee after Dinner, it seems such a little thing but as drinks at meal times are included it would be nice to be able to finish a nice meal with a tea or coffee, even if it's from a machine and I need to get it myself, I like that part of Dinner. 

Thankful Thursday Week 15

Welcome back to my weekly linky for us all to share our silver linings, brags, boasts or just something that made us smile. Be it a picture, a word, a sentence or a great big essay lets share what we are thankful for this week. It can be a new post just for this linky, a picture, a video, one word or a thousand this linky is all about thankfulness so whatever has made you grateful this week I would love to know
If you would like to link up I would  love for you to grab the badge below and spread a little linky love to some of the others taking part, and don't forget to spread the word, invite lots of people and help me grow this and make Thursdays a happier place.It was lovely to see more of you last week and I'm grateful to you all for joining in.

This week I'm thankful for holidays, for switching off the alarm, having lazy mornings and no rushing around. Ah bliss
Adventures Of A Monkeyfooted Mummy

Travel Journal Easter in Crete Part 2

Settling In

It's  day 3 and after speaking to reception we have been moved to a ground floor suite. I feel much better and more relaxed. The new room wasn't ready as quickly as we were told and instead of lunchtime we weren't settled in with our bags and the cot until past 10pm. But it's been great to just be changed to a different room with minimal fuss. We are also still on standby to upgrade to a swim up if one comes available so I'm
hoping that come change over day we can be swimming in our own little river ! 

The kids have been to Playhouse (Sensatori's Kids Club) and seen a lovely lady called Jo Jo who we first met in Tenerife Sensatori so this is our third holiday with her. She gave the kids a massive welcome totally recognising Peanut and because of that we've hardly seen the kids as they want to go to every session, and there are up to 4 sessions a day! Yesterday they went to the 'arty party' from 7.30-9.30pm so Spartacus and I enjoyed a meal in The Five Flavours Thai with just a sleeping Termite for company, the novelty of just adult  conversation was so wonderful it took us almost 30 minutes to even look at the menu! 

We've been recognised by a few of the hotel staff Chryssa in the restaurant always greets us like family which is lovely, even the Executive chef remembers us and cooed over Termite, welcoming our 'new addition', and Dimytris from Tex Mex behaved like he had just seen us yesterday! 

The weather was miserable on Monday with rain, but there was plenty to keep the kids entertained and the sky is showing promise of a beautiful day so we are off to choose which of the 5 pools to visit.... 


Tuesday, 8 April 2014

Guest Post - A Rich Vein of Socks

Today I have a guest post from the very brilliant Fiona from Mama's Little Baby Loves. This is a post close to my heart, I hate socks, I do theres no lying, when we married I told my husband to never expect to have his socks paired. In my humble opinion life is just too short!

A rich vein of socks...
Since becoming a stay at home mum I have learned that there are no bounds to the excitement everyday tasks can give you...when you have no other source of excitement...well mental excitement anyway. Today I was overjoyed to find that a magical 1 in 230 event had occurred... (wait for it...)
When the tumble dryer stopped lots of tiny child socks happened to be in VERY close proximity to each other.
I know. Awesome right? Was worth the build up wasn’t it? Now if you’re not a mum or someone responsible for dressing multiple small people that might not mean anything to you. If you are and that still doesn’t mean anything to you then you’re obviously broken or lying...I’m talking SOCKS PRACTICALLY PAIRING THEMSELVES here woman!

Whenever this occurs it gets me excited, it gives me hope for the future, it brightens my otherwise potentially epically dull dayI don’t care that the other 229 times I’ve opened the dryer door I have to crouch there on the cold floor rummaging around for 40 minutes looking desperately for 4 socks (I gave up the whole ‘matching pairs’ thing long ago – any four will do), this time the socks were caught unawares, and when the music stopped they were not prepared, they didn’t have time to sneak to the four corners of the tumble dryer, cram themselves in the fluff filter or squash themselves down joggybum legs. This time I won. In your face sockymcsocksocks, I AM the daddy (well the mummy) and I OWN you!!



You might think this is a bit of an over the top reaction, I would think that too, if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m here at home every day where sorting out the socks is a task with quantifiable results, on which my performance as a stay at home mum can be judged. If the sock situation is on a failure pathway, it means the child dressing stage gets delayed, which means we might have to negotiate a deal on watching cbeebies till the end of the next show, which means walkquickly’ negotiations might be damaged ultimately resulting in a multiple meltdown scenario. By the time we’ve got to playgroup we’re all late and I’m cross.
You might not believe it, but I used to have a ‘real job’ where we used all the same words as I’ve used about socks, but about multi-million pound engineering jobs instead. I thought when I started as a stay at home mum that my job would be less important and demanding than my ‘career’, but as it turns out, it’s really not. We still do ‘blue sky thinking’ and ‘work things through’ only now I do it with a 2 yr old and a 3 yr old...instead of ummmm... well let’s stop there shall we...
I’ll tell you one thing for sure though, I’ve left all that washing in the tumble dryer again tonight, because now I know there’s a rich vein of socks to be found, I’m not messing up that load until I’ve exhausted the supply, and have to risk putting the next load in and the epic disappointment that will result when the socks once again, conspire against me, forcing me to pair them. Well at least get out vaguely similar looking ones; let’s not get too carried away.

Well Said Fiona, I personally think socks are evil and wicked! So what winds you up at home or is sock finding and pairing a universal bug bear? You can follow Fiona on Facebook or Twitter

Monday, 7 April 2014

Travel Journal - Easter in Crete Part One

Crete is one of my most favourite places in the world, and I'm sure it's obvious by our previous review that we are big Sensatori fans. So we jumped at the chance of a last minute getaway.
I decided to write a journal while we are here to give an almost 'real time account of things, I sometimes find that when you come home from a holiday, reviews written retrospectively tend to be rose tinted so hopefully this will be a real honest to goodness, warts and all of everything we experience.

Booking

Spartacus got booked up quickly and easily with Thomson online and we managed to choose some seats on the plane and check in all from the comfort of our lap top

The Flight

Sadly this is a bug bear for me, we have to travel around 3 hours to get a Crete flight at this time of year as schedules don't start yet at our local airport. Never the less we were boarded quickly, and ready to leave on time, alas queuing on the runway meant a late take off but we made up time and arrived only slightly late.

Arrival

Herklion was as efficient as always. They are only small but really the most efficient I've ever been through and the only airport I've never experienced a delay in and we've been here 10 times now. 

Now the idea is Sensatori guests get preferential meet and greet but at this time of year with few other hotels open everyone on the plane is for Sensatori so the queue is huge. I genuinely think Thomson would be better served getting everyone on the bus super quick and straight to the hotel instead of tagging cases, explaining things and handing out forms, all of which could be done in reception instead of making passengers queue in the street at night.

Last year (our third visit) we had a marvellous welcome with lots of acknowledgement and a free upgrade, as well as fruit and wine in our room, this year not so much, we has fruit and wine (but I think everyone does) and a postcard from Thomson but nothing else, now don't get me wrong I don't believe we are 'entitled' to anything but I think we were spoiled last yet and so our expectations this year were even greater!

There was as always glasses of bubbly or juice on arrival and check in is quick and there are lots of Thomson staff on hand to help with finding rooms etc

The hotel had kindly left the restaurant open for a cold buffet but with all the delay at the airport staff were eager to get closed by the time we got there, another reason I think to not to keep people at the airport so long.

ImageImage via thomson.co.uk

The Room

Because we booked so late there were sadly no swim up rooms available. And the hotel have not been able to let us purchase an upgrade with them directly as they have no availability, but we managed to book a suite instead, the suite officially sleeps up to four so we had to book  a double room as well but in honesty the five of us are sleeping in the suite with loads of room to spare! The room is decorated in lovely opulent Greek style with big gilt mirrors and shiny marble flooring, we have a large double bedroom with a big sofa, and a small tv, a seperate living area with two sofa beds and a small tv, and a lovely bathroom. We seem to be missing a chest of drawers like we normally have and the wardrobe is smaller than usual but it has everything we need. My only concern is that we are on the top floor and there are no safety gates of child proof locks on the balcony doors so mummy is having a rather sleepless night with worry ! I would much prefer being on the lower floors.

Well that's all for tonight, we shall report again in a few days 

Amber Anklet Discount Code

You will remember we reviewed Amber Anklets a while ago, and LOVED them. We also ran a very successful competition to win one, so successful in fact that to say thanks to everyone who entered the lovely Tamara has offered my lovely readers a whopping 20% discount and free delivery! Enter code spring at the checkout but hurry its only valid until 2/5/14. 

What are you waiting for ? 


AMBER ANKLETS

Thursday, 3 April 2014

Thankful Thursday Week 14

Welcome back to my weekly linky for us all to share our silver linings, brags, boasts or just something that made us smile. Be it a picture, a word, a sentence or a great big essay lets share what we are thankful for this week. It can be a new post just for this linky, a picture, a video, one word or a thousand this linky is all about thankfulness so whatever has made you grateful this week I would love to know


If you would like to link up I would  love for you to grab the badge below and spread a little linky love to some of the others taking part, and don't forget to spread the word, invite lots of people and help me grow this and make Thursdays a happier place.It was lovely to see more of you last week and I'm grateful to you all for joining in.

This Week my thanks are simple ...... 




Adventures Of A Monkeyfooted Mummy