Last week we ventured a little further afield in the car and headed up to the Lassithi Plateau with our friend Georgie. We had a 40km drive through the mountains to get up there. The scenery was amazing, looking straight down onto the Gulf of Mirabella and straight up at the snow caps. The Lassithi Plateau is a plain up on Mount Dikti where the climate is much more English than Greek. The land was unlike any other we've seen in Greece, a patchwork of fields lying fallow after the harvest.

We'd forgotten to take our map and guide book so followed signs to areas of interest and headed to Magoula's Old Fountain first - a bit of a disappointment as you'll see if you look at the photos. After that we headed to the Diktaean Cave where Zeus was allegedly born. After a dodgy climb up what was obviously a donkey track we reached the entrance of the cave to find that it was closed until next summer! We stopped at the top and had the lunch that we'd packed and then headed back down. From the top we could see that there was a path which we followed back down to the car park, much less treacherous than the donkey track we'd taken on the way up. On our way back down to Elounda we came across lots of opportunities for Christmas dinner but we didn't fancy the dent on the front of the car so we left the pigs, sheep and goats to their wanderings and headed home.

We've had a few more parties since the Christmas dinner at Sylv and Jeff's. A friend, Annie, had a birthday party in the Miakoda Bar, a great night which ended up being a disco night with everyone up dancing for hours. The next night it was Georgie's turn to host the dinner party and we had a Mexican night with fantastic food and lots of laughs. Our turn to host was on Tuesday and we had four friends out to Norna for dinner.

The Christmas shopping is all done. We're going to share the day with 7 friends and have been out and got everything that we need. We've even managed to find fresh swede and parsnips - at a ridiculous cost but it is Christmas. After our dinner with Sylv and Jeff and the antics on the Wii Fit, we thought that it would be a good idea to have something like that for Christmas. Luckily Lidl were advertising that they would be selling a similar sort of thing at only €40 so we decided to try to get hold of one. It was decided that Andy and I would be at Lidl before they opened on Monday morning so that we had the best chance of securing one. We duly got up early on Monday and were waiting outside Lidl for it to open at 8am. We'd been warned that there would be a bit of a scram when the doors opened so Andy got a trolley so that he could block access with his 'incompetence'! When the doors opened I went ahead to the shelves and left Andy behind doing battle with his trolley. There was a small Greek lady behind, running along trying to get in front of me (I was obviously walking too fast for her little legs). I reached the shelves and managed to grab one of only ten games in the place. By the time Andy had caught me up they were all gone!

Our plan for Christmas day is to go the Miakoda Bar (owned by our friend Georgie), use the space and kitchen there for dinner for 9 of us. We've got loads of food and drink, a few games (and of course the Lidl's games consul) so we should have a laugh. There's wifi in the bar so we'll take the laptop over and put skype on.

Hope you all have a lovely Christmas.