Family Time - Cotswolds, Athens & Ikos

Nikhil Shah

May 15, 20245 min read

After our 4 month stint in Asia & Oceania it was finally time to come home for a short week and celebrate Emma’s mums and brother’s joint 90th. For a brief moment it seemed liked we’d brought the weather with us as England was graced with the first sunny day it had seen since 2023. We headed straight to the Cotswolds and it felt good to be there. We enjoyed the countryside through a disgracefully unfit run around the village and ate a wonderful feasts as Eloise always prepares. Eloise had asked us to learn bridge for her birthday and while we learnt the basics online, she gave us our first lesson as we put what we'd learnt into practice according to the rules of Eloise, which at the time of writing we have learnt we're somewhat loosely interpreted. It wasn't soon after when the floodgates opened with torrential rainfall and we were properly graced with the official welcome back to England.

We then headed back to London where I caught up with my newborn nephew and niece as well as my friend visiting from Australia. I even attempted to play golf with Dev on yet another miserable day out but 1h in we decided to pack it in and instead talked about plans of a golf trip in the sun which was much better than playing it. Rupert’s 30th at sticks and sushi was hugely fun and fairly drunken affair. It was clear we had well overstayed our welcome, when the tally of cleaning products I had seen around our table was overtakign the plates of sushi from our feast, clearly a sign of a successful dinner! Rupert's celebrations continued at a pub and it was good to catch up with his mates as well as quite a few of ours that also swung by. Sadly a visit to the opticians for Emma resulted in the realisation of her right eye deteriorating and she was prescribed the unusual medication of concentrating on a lit screen whilst wearing an eye patch to strengthen her non covered eye. With her interest in bridge continually increasing, it is now quite a common site to find her tucked away in some corner looking like a card playing pirate glued to her phone.

Athens

Emma’s BA silver status and Avios points have been serving us wonderfully on all our One World alliance flights (shout out to big pharma). There had been talk among the Shah clan about BA rewards flights to Thessaloniki but our laid back booking mentality meant we were too late. Instead, Emma booked us flights to Athens for a quick city break before the family holiday. Yes that’s right, this was a 'quick' city break prior to our all inclusive resort holiday after we’d taken a break from the travelling we’d been doing around the world. Tough life.

We arrived quite late and had an early night ready for our full day in Athens and it was marvellous. Welcomed by weather so good the locals don’t mention it in small talk, we strolled the Athenian streets and ventured our way through parks and ruins with regular pit stops for some great food. Unfortunately we picked a day when all of the major sights were closed due to Orthodox Easter so just stared from the outside much like all the other confused tourists. Of our assumed travel roles, Emma is the official restaurant/bar picker and made some excellent choices:

Holy Llama, an entirely plant based patisserie where you could find everything in Paul done vegan.
Veganaki, a traditional Greek place with a plant based twist.
360 Cocktail Bar, a popular haunt amongst locals and tourists alike offering nice cocktails with a view over the Acropolis.

Ikos Resorts - Halkidiki

The journey to Ikos was almost seemless from the on time smooth train journey to being picked up in an Ikos branded Mercedes AMG taxi at the train station. A minor hiccup in me being stopped aggressively by an undercover policeman up against a wall and being asked to show identifcation. Second bit of negative racial profiling but he seemed satisfied pretty quickly and didn’t let it affect my excited mood.

Our travels have been so good that Emma and I are quite often look at ourselves in shock and ask ourselves what we’ve done to deserve this. The same happened as we entered the IKOS resort. Like some sort of utopian VR afterlife, everything looked perfect. The staff with white outfits, perfect smiles with perfect teeth were serving a variety of cocktails to all the guest just like our champagne on arrival. With money started to dwindle and nothing to pay for all week, it felt good to indulge worry free. We caught up with the whole clan and it was great to see everyone in one place after such a long time and immediately super comfortable with each other. We spent the days doing yoga, playing tennis, basketball and volleyball as well as drinking at the beach or by the pool and made a point to eat at all the various restaurants the resort had to offer, with reservation rotations allowing us to properly catch up with everyone.

Eliyas, Anya and Ishaan had become something of a little crew and enjoyed activites like pedloing in the sea, swimming in the pool or attempting to play tennis together. Ishaan felt like a little adult and was joining adults in their chats constantly and rightfully questioning things, most notably how fast anything might go in his preferred speed choice of mph. Anya had found a new best friend in Emma and both enjoyed some girlie time with each other, something I'm sure Emma was loving after 4 months stuck with me. Eliyas had started to become more obsessed with tennis and following in my dad's footsteps his confidence grew so much that he started to lead tennis lessons himself, ensuring every was equipped with their own racket and bottle of water and was hitting it in his desired way. Khush and Amari, while both looking like a pair of identical bruisers/skinhead twins, at times couldn’t have been more different. Khush really taking the holiday into his stride was constantly finding another sofa or restaurant to sleep on and would just observe if held, while Amari was wriggling so much he’d exhaust himself into sleeping. Amari, obviously got the all-inclusive food memo was trying to put literally everything, including Khush into his mouth.

Benamasi, Vipulmasa, Brett and Emma had formed a Bridge club and Emma was loving the scandal-ridden daily session as Vipulmasa and Brett would often engage in passive aggressive bickering as they struggled to find a harmonic rhythm as a pair. Mum and Dad and also enjoyed some tennis and volleyball, impressing all with their continued physical and sporting abilities well into their 60s, and even took on some intensive babysitting while all the young parents found ways to finally have a bit of a break through on demand childcare with food and drink on tap. Some other highlights included:

Wine tasting with the Tailors and Bhavini lead by the sweetest man, Enrique, with a passion for Wine, learning English and making translingual dad jokes.
A new found appreciation for Noemi & Arjun whilst seeing how they manage to successfully operate on little to no sleep with 2 seriously active children.
The father-son outfit and hairstyle combos from Sunil and Ishaan, who wouldn't dare let Aasha go near his hair.
Ouzo, the greek restaurant with mushrooms and gazpacho so good that Vipulmasa would often sneak off to it and I couldn't count the number of times I went on my 2 hands.