Kalamaki; Friday, 03 October, 2025

I’d stayed overnight at an airport hotel at Gatwick’s North Terminal, which had all been fine when I’d first booked the trip, and the hotel, but a couple of months before my departure TUI had switched the flight to the South Terminal and brought the flight time earlier by a few minutes, but by then the prices were such that it was better to stay at the North Terminal and just get up earlier to head over to the South Terminal. Thankfully I had managed to take advantage of night before check-in so I could go straight through security and into departures.

Worryingly the Gate Displayed time kept slipping for about 20 minutes before we finally had a gate number located in the old south satellite terminal, so I was able to get my steps in with the hefty walk over there – in days gone by that would have been a little shuttle train!

The boarding process was pretty smooth and we were all closed up and ready to go about 10 minutes before our scheduled departure time, at which point the captain informed us that there was congestion at the airport so there would be a little wait before we got underway, and we promptly remained on our stand for the next 30 minutes before finally pushing back for our sightly bumpy flight down to the Greek Islands.

I was sat in the middle of the plane, which of course meant when both rear and front stairs are used I was one of the last to disembark, with about a dozen of us left standing on the tarmac as the previous bus was too full to take us all, so rather than being rammed into the bus we waited a couple of minutes and all had a seat back to the terminal building.

Immigration was pretty quick, so much so that by the time I reached baggage reclaim, despite being one of the last people through, the bags were only just coming off. Once I’d collected my bag I wandered out the front and round to the transfer busses to find my bus out to my resort. Given how close the hotel was to the airport (virtually on the end of the runway), it was unsurprising that I was in my hotel less than 15 minutes after the coach pulled out of the airport.

I’d arrived in time to have lunch so after a quick change into clothing better suited to the Greek Islands rather than Southern England in October, I headed down to the buffet and had a bit to eat. After lunch I headed back to my room to pick up my camera and then wandered down to the beach. I was in a gap between some pretty hefty showers, so was able to take quite a lot of photos of the beach without having to worry about taking photos of people as the sun loungers were all deserted.

I walked along the beach and then heading back up into town to have a walk through the resort, but it was clear that off-season was already in full swing as a lot of sites were closed for the winter already, so instead I just headed back to the hotel to freshen up before dinner.

After dinner I had a quick drink in the bar – just about getting used to the all inclusive concept of just going up and pouring myself a beer whenever I wanted (before 11pm after which point all drinks including water became chargeable – so not quite so all inclusive).

I then headed back to my room for a good nights sleep given the hour I’d had to get up this morning.