It didn’t look exactly sunny as we docked in Greece at 8am this morning.

As we hadn’t done this part of the journey before, today was the traveling day I was most looking forward to – the drive across the very top of Greece over mountains and hopefully catching a view of Mount Olympus.

It started to snow pretty much as soon as we offloaded from the ferry and began the drive out of Igoumenitsa towards the mountains. As we climbed higher, the snow gave way to thick fog and we could have been driving through the most beautiful scenery in the world and we would never know.

I know it’s still February, but I really wasn’t expecting thick fog and snow to obscure our view of pretty much everything until we got to Thessaloniki. Lucky old me that I was also the one driving the twisty turny mountain roads in the pea-souper, unlucky old Nige that he had to put up with me moaning about it.

At this point, Nige decides it’s time to listen to the ‘Teach Yourself Turkish’ audio book he downloaded before we left Brussels. Not that we are leaving it until the last minute or anything; it’s not like it’s the day before we cross the border… oh wait! It IS the day before we cross the border, and we’ve only known about the posting for, what? Six months? There’s no time like the present… unless you are stuck in a car trying to concentrate on the traffic with next to no visibility and hearing completely different things coming from the radio than are being spoken aloud from the passenger seat.

Up until now, pretty much the only cross words in the car during the whole journey were between the cats. Learning Turkish is going to be hard enough without having to unlearn wrong stuff subliminally absorbed during the drive over. I managed to persuade him it was putting me off my driving and thankfully it was switched off until another day.

Our final stop in Greece is in Komotini – the nearest place I could find to the border where they would take the cats. On arrival at the small family run hotel, the owner tells me how pretty the cats are, and his father scowls at me from over his shoulder and gesticulates the International Sign Language for ‘do not let those creatures scratch any of the furniture, or there will be trouble’.

We get up to the room to discover everything has been newly upholstered in lilac velour, and the cats pounce as if all the surfaces are saturated in catnip.

There’s only one thing for it. I need to either hide or cover ALL the furniture in the room before we can leave in search of food and beer. With the stress of the drive in crappy weather (me), and the stress of unlearning Turkish (me), and the stress of having your language learning criticised (him), and the stress of thinking you are going to get charged 100’s of Euro for damage to lilac velour (me), and the stress of having to wait for a beer whilst your wife puts chairs into the closet (him), the next 20 minutes become full of needless bickering but provide an opportunity for creative problem solving with the surfaces-to-be-covered/available-things-to-use as-covers ratio being unfavourably balanced.

Finally I’m satisfied. Towels are over the wingback chair, footstool and ottoman; the dressing table chair is in the closet along with the satin counterpane, and any gap that Bella might find to hide in has been blocked. Now I’m ready to head out to find some beer and throw some plates.

Day 4 Summary

Distance: 575km

Country Count: Greece

Hours in the car: 5

Cat fights per hour: 0

Total fights per hour: 1