Now that I’ve finally finished my exams I have some time to write something interesting again!

Exams went fine, results day is 18th August, no more talk of them until I have officially passed, OK?

The week after my last exam was prom. I had my hair done like Alexandra Stan in her video for Mr Saxobeat. Google it if you have no idea what I’m on about. I wore my amazing Karen Millen dress (I will add photos when I find my mum’s camera), and got ready at my friend’s house. Her dad drove us to the venue, an old manor near Reading, in his army style Land Rover Defender. It was a cool journey, but I’m slightly disappointed since we got there from the back way and missed the photographer on arrival so don’t have any pretty posy photos of us.

I had everyone round to my house afterwards, which was a great success if I do say so myself! People had a great time, and I hardly had anything to clean the next day, except there were cheesy balls all over the lounge..

That saturday, Toby and I went off to Rhodes.

The flight there was absolutely fine, if not a little uncomfortable like all plane flights. It was only 4 hours, so I couldn’t complain compared to the 10 to LAX two months ago! When we arrived we went out in the 27 degree heat (in the middle of the night) to find the coach to our hotel. Once checked in, we waited for the mad minibus driver to drop us at our room, which was lovely. We had a great little balcony with an amazing view of the Kalithea springs and Faliraki. Our hotel was between the Kalithea springs and the small Kalithea town.

The next morning, we had a welcome meeting with the rep, and then we had lunch in the snack bar by one of the pools. There were 3 pool complexes, each with 3 or 4 tiers of pools and waterfalls. It was an amazing place. We spent the afternoon lazing by the pool, enjoying all inclusive drinks and snacks, but we weren’t entirely sure if we had to ask for things or not.

That evening we had our first dinner in the buffet, which had some really nice stuff every night. They always had a selection of pasta dishes, meats, including ostrich one day, and fish, like swordfish. I couldn’t complain about the food at all! We went to the bar afterwards and tried the selection of cocktails and met the barman, Savvas, who we ended up being quite friendly with. They had some really nice cocktails, although they seemed to be half alcohol at least, they were quite strong!

On Monday, we walked down the road to the springs, which was an old thermal spa that had a nice bar and a little beach. We had a look round, and then sat down and had a drink. We sat in the heat, reading the books we’d bought at the airport, and had a nice relax. I was getting used to seeing cats everywhere, as we kept being visited by a cute little tortoiseshell with half a tail.

We had some lunch by the waterside; two huge plates full of triple tiered club sandwiches and the best chips you’ve ever seen. It was lovely. I had a quick dip in the sea but was a little uncomfortable.. I’ve never been a fan of open water when you can’t touch the bottom (when I don’t have diving kit that is), and although I could, it was rocky with anemones and things that I didn’t want to be treading on. We wandered back to the hotel after the heat had died down a little, but it was still over 30 degrees. Granted this probably wasn’t the best idea, but we are English, we have to do the stupidest things on holiday in hot places! We did the same bar, dinner, bar plan again, and headed back to the room quite late with a big bottle of smirnoff ice for another day to leave in the fridge.

The next day, we got up and had another great breakfast, consisting of awesome waffles and pancakes with melted nutella type stuff and powdered sugar. We had the same every day, but it was damn good. We made our way to the bus stop and took the local bus up to Rhodes town. It took us a while to find the old town, especially after wandering through shops selling genuine fakes for us to oggle over. We eventually found the old town, but of course we went in the long way! The town was lovely; yeah there were a lot more shops selling genuine fakes, and we bought a few, and plenty of bars and restaurants with the usual man outside beckoning you to have your all day breakfast in his place. We did stumble upon a bar that had Magner’s, so of course we had to have a drink there. Toby had a boot-shaped glass of Magner’s and I had a fruit cocktail that must have had over a kilo of fruit balanced on top! It was amazing. We found the palace of the Knights of St. John (the St. John that does our ambulances in the UK), and had a wander around inside there during the hottest part of the day. We had lunch at a nice cafe, and plenty of souvenir browsing in all the shops.

We took a while to find the bus back, but we did, and followed the usual plan for the evening.

On Wednesday, we went to Faliraki, the hub for nightlife in Rhodes. It wasn’t as great during the day, but we got a few more presents for people and had a nice drink in an English run bar called Bar Jamaica. We waited for a while in the sun to get the bus back, but had lunch in the snack bar at the hotel again, before heading down to our private beach in our wetsuits for some snorkelling. We left our flip flops and towels on a sunbed while we swam around trying to take photos of fish underwater while our wetsuits made us float too much. Eventually we got a little cold and tired and headed back in, only to be told we had to pay to use a sunbed, and we had to pay for food and drinks at the beach bar. We gave up with that and walked back up to our room, before heading to the pool instead.

Thursday was diving day, and we got up early, had breakfast and caught a coach up to Mandraki harbour in Rodos town. We found the Waterhoppers dive boat, and eventually it got going back down to Kalithea bay, right under our hotel’s cliff. We were two of 6 qualified divers, and we had the briefing during the boat trip. We moored at a little platform and off we went for the first dive.

We had an hour or two surface interval, in which we got to see the edited video that had been filmed of us during the dive. We didn’t feel like paying for it, but we had some lunch and went off for dive 2. This was a dive that included a bit of cave diving, something we aren’t actually qualified to do. We were only in the overhead environment for a little while though, and it was a great dive.

I loved the diving in Rhodes, and we made friends with an Italian called Guiseppe, who was from Rome, but lives in Surrey and dives at good old Wraysbury, where we learnt to dive.

We had an early night that night, as you can imagine we were quite tired.

Friday was a fun day; we went to the Faliraki water park. We spent the day on slides and flumes, and bobbing about in the wave pool on rubber rings. It was a nice fun yet relaxing way to end, and we had a huge lunch that consisted of a burger, chicken nuggets, a hell of a lot of chips and onion rings! We headed back to the hotel and made the most of our last night in the bar. Savvas had been giving us little cocktail monkeys all week, but he took it one step further and made ‘sexy monkeys’ for us this night. You can imagine what they were.. Very funny. They then played Sex Bomb on the stereo!

We had more drinks on the balcony together, taking photos of the view with our cameras and playing with shutter speeds and different effects.

The next day, we had to be out of the room by 12, so we had breakfast and then got packing. We checked out and left our cases in the luggage room and headed to the pool. We spent the whole afternoon by the spa pool discussing work stuff and other random things, and eventually went to dinner. This was our one visit to the a la carte restaurant, where we got champagne and heart shaped candles on our table. We had an amazing view of the sea from our table, and the evening was a fantastic end to a wonderful holiday. We then went to the bar, where we had more drinks until our coach came to get us at 11pm. The bar was 30 degrees inside though, so we weren’t all that comfy.

The flight home was fine, and Toby’s dad picked us up from Gatwick and we had a present giving session once we got home. It’s nice to be back home, but I do still want to go back to Rhodes. One day we will, I’m sure!