We arrived back from Thassos on 27th August. Spent 2 weeks at the Dionysus Hotel in Golden Beach. The hotel was great, fantastic views and VERY clean. It was nice to have a pool as we found the beaches to be dirty and did not enjoy the ever growing mountains of fag ends deposited in the sand. We went to Aliki beach and spent a good day there, though it was very crowded and would advise getting there early and to take your own brolly. However the tavernas were more expensive. It was full of Greeks and tourists alike. The 15th August was a festival day in Panagia and the whole area was full of Greeks on holiday that week, the 2nd week there were less people around.

We had a car through Holiday Autos, using Hertz and spent time driving around the island. We drove up into the mountains to Maries (having got misled in Skala Maries!)and went to the lake, which was muddy, due to the rain that had fallen during the 1st week, (thankfully not on us!). We carried on through the ! mountain roads to Theologos, which I have to admit was rather scary in places, but the views were well worth it and thanks to Ians careful driving we managed to return with no damage to the underneath of the car. We did not have a 4 x 4, but a little Renault Twingo (Clio)and we did not encounter any problems. It was fascinating to see piles of marble just lying around, so we picked a couple of nice pieces.

As to restaurants, well we ate at Vigli, but I personally felt the food was a little too salty for my liking, but my 2 "boys" loved the Beef K(no idea what the rest of the word was, but it began with a "K"!)We tried Alexandros in Skala Potomias once, but fell in love with The Krambousa. We ate there on a regular basis and the pan fried courgettes are to die for along with the meatballs (though according to Ian, not as good as the ones in Corfu). It was very popular with the Greeks, and therefore it must be good. The owners only close for Nov and Dec to pick their olives! The! other place we ate was Sotiris in Golden Beach, but found them lacking in staff and the service was slow, (even slower than the Krambousa). We ate quite a lot at The Fedra, where we had excellent service and friendly staff, cannot recommend it highly enough!

Regards excursions, we used Thomson and felt that they were highly overpriced. To do a boat trip round the island go the the Old Port in Thassos Town and go on a trip from there, half the price and much better value for money.

We had a lot of trouble with the wasps, who it seemed frequented just the Golden Beach/Skala Potomias area, possibly due to the fact that they seem to make their nests in the pine trees. Ian spent most of the holiday armed with a flip flop and consequently came home knackered. Jack was stung quite a number of times and this put a dampener on the trip. We found that if you waited to eat until after 8pm, most of the wasps had gone home to bed, but then the mosquitos came out in force! No pleasing some! people eh? We were told that the wasps were so bad as there hadn't been any rain in April to wash the nests away. Anyway we found this to be one major bugbear along with a lot of people we spoke to, the main topic of conversation being the wasps and how many time you'd been stung! The burning coffee worked to a certain extent, but they were certainly persistent little things.

All in all the holiday was ok, but we decided we prefered San Stefanos on Corfu and do not think we will return to Thassos again.