My first visit was in May 1999 following a last minute deal my wife had seen in our local independent travel agent. If memory serves, we paid less than £600 for the fortnight (which included the Whitsun school holiday week) for a self catering apartment at the Perros Hotel for the four of us - me, my wife and our two daughters, then aged 5 and 3.
We arrived at some unearthly hour ( wasn't it always the case back then with package holiday flights to Greece?) and were housed overnight in a very basic apartment from which we were promptly moved the following day for something more suitable. Again, this thing seemed to happen a lot in those days!
What then followed was one of our favourite ever family holidays. The first thing I remember is being a little shocked at the general appearance of the surrounding neighbourhood - our foreign holiday experience up until that point had been based on visits to the more manicured resorts of Spain, and San Stefanos was most definitely not manicured! Half finished buildings with great lengths of steel pointing out of the concrete towards the blue sky, a fair bit of roadside litter, grassy scrub land forming the gaps between one taverna and the next, no discernable pavements and of course the inevitable " we do WHAT with the toilet paper???!!!", were all something of a culture shock.
But, ( and all you forum folk will now know what's coming) as the first days turned into the first week, we slowly just "got" it. We got the warmth and genuine welcome of every "kalimera" from everyone we met. We got the fuss made of two very small, very blonde girls at every shop and taverna often resulting in a free sweet or two, we got the unbelievable light of the endless sunny days, the smells (not all of them pleasant!) that are unique to Greece, the parades of giant ants, the fireflies on our evening walks back to the hotel. We were hooked.
However, here is the twist. This didn't then result in return visits year on year. We were never ones to go back to the same resort -
not even just twice. So what followed instead was visits to other Greeks islands and indeed, many other European countries. And many great holidays.Now fast forward to 2015. As an obsessive Tripadvisor advocate, on a whim I searched for the Perros, mainly just to see if it was still up and running and, finding that it most definitely was, suggested to my less than convinced wife that we should return. We duly did, now minus our grown up daughters, and had a wonderful time.
We were both surprised at the very little change we could perceive - other than the closure of the restaurant opposite to the Perros ( whose name escapes me I'm afraid ) which had been a favourite of ours on Greek night. Peli and Maria were still there ( we reminisced to them of how they bestowed gifts of Tic-Tacs on our daughters) and so too was Stelios at The Olympia ( but minus his ponytail....). Neither of us banked on the wave of nostalgia that hit us as we contemplated our previous visit which on one hand seemed like yesterday and on the other seemed like a lifetime ago. As Captain Corelli muses in Antoine de Bernieres' novel, " Time is a complete b******...."
Now nostalgia is a Greek word ( obviously - they have all the best ones !) meaning, literally "nostos" ( return home) "algos" (pain). So, in a way, it defines a sort of homesickness - a longing to return. I think that this is what we felt. A homesickness for somewhere that wasn't even our home, but in some way felt like a place we belonged. Does this make sense to anyone else?
Just why this little resort, with its hotch potch development, its untidy corners and its randomness now has such a hold on us is really quite a mystery. We've visited prettier places, places with more to see and do, with better beaches, better infrastructure......but nowhere that has the same grip on our hearts as little old San Stefanos. Friends of ours ask about this little place we revisit but I find I'm always reluctant to recommend it too highly. I find I'm being a little guarded, a little protective. "What if they just don't "get" it like we do?". Is this just me?
So there we are. How I found San Stefanos. And why we are back again next month.
Topic: How I found San Stefanos.!!! (Read 198734 times)