What a difference a year makes! My Greek sister Mirela has recently welcomed a new addition to her family, Master Alejandro – a perfect mix of Greek (Mirela’s) and Spanish (Enrique’s) genes. To say that Alejandro is a big baby is a massive understatement – by the time I visited he was only two months old but I swear he was practically the size of a six month old if not bigger! Not sure how Mirela housed him let alone pushed him out of her body! Ha!

I was only visiting for an extended long weekend and with the baby we couldn’t really travel too far so we didn’t move too far from the house in Athens. Which was fine with me as it was nice to catch up with all of Mirela’s family and also indulge in lot of local Greek cooking and food and relaxing on their lovely balcony.

One of the funnier highlights was attending a random Greek couple’s wedding! Apparently there is recent trend for couples with upcoming nuptials to attend other weddings in order to be able to sample the food. I guess the couple who are having the wedding get some sort of discount on their package to allow this to happen. At this wedding (as with most weddings) the reception was outdoors. The guests all sat around tables whilst we sat on couches on the edge. To be fair quite reasonably far away from the actual guests but you couldn’t ignore the fact we were there. When it came time for the food (it was a buffet) they started off with some of the guests but before everyone got to go up we were told to go and get our plates! A bit awkward! At least once we had our plates we were sat indoors hidden away.

There are two things that Mirela misses from London – one she doesn’t get to indulge in much (sushi) and the other (duck pancake) is unfortunately not available anywhere in Greece (apparently.) So, to let her indulge in at least one of her wants we went to a local sushi place for dinner which was nice without being too stuning.

The great thing about the way Mirela’s house is built (and I guess many Greek homes) is that she has plenty of family living in the same building from her grandmother at the bottom, to her aunt and uncle on the first floor, to her parents and sister (when she is home from Uni) on the second floor, and Mirela on the top floor with an extra room for guests. This is a fantastic support structure and clearly Alejandro is not going to lack for playmates (albeit not his age) or babysitters. That he is very much adored and loved by all was apparent on my visit.