Land of the Gods

So when I heard that the boat spent 4-5 months of the year in Greece, I must admit, I wasn’t too chuffed – bad economy, lamb slaughtering, fat sweaty men & worst of all, I wouldn’t be able to read/understand anything (I understand a little bit of French ok?!). When I got here, however, it was a whole different story.

We left Monaco with the longest goodbye on the 16^th June. On our way over, we were lucky enough to get to use the Jacuzzi, in the middle of the sea, at night. Just us, the Jacuzzi light and the stars. Its amazing how small you feel when you are in the middle of nowhere, with no land, lights or people around.  You realise how precious life is and, how easy it is to throw someone overboard and make it look like an accident, c’mon, it has  all crossed your minds yachties! It was truly an amazing experience.

When we got here we thought it would be work, work, work. And it was. Except when we got our 1 day a week off. We have now changed the saying to TIGW – Thank God Its Wednesday. Our couple of days off were spent frying on the beach because Daisy felt that her change of ethnicity from Caucasian to coloured her transformation occurred on the trip over was still not enough and she wanted to be Black. So off we went, armed with cancer inducing oil to so soak up some sun and catch up on some much needed rest.

Naturally we grew hungry so we ventured into the city with a crew member that was “in the know” about places to go. We sat down at a table set on a terrace with the hint of a view of the acropolis in Athens old town. We  watched the Asian tourists, drank wine and ouzo and smashed about 6 bowls of chips before moving on to dinner.  At this point we were ravenous, and unlike other normal girls, the stews on our boat  could devour a horse any time of the day so you can imagine the moods that eating at 10pm put the four of us in.

We headed further into town and walked along another quaint little street and found a spot. Davo was in charge and it all kicked off: tzatsiki, flatbread, normal bread, fried aubergines, wine etc. When we were all groaning from too-full-tummies, the meat platter arrived. If Dave was trying to kill us with food, it worked. So we munched and drank our way into gluttony and we were has happy as -excuse my crudeness – pigs in s***. After not really drinking for a whole week that wine went to my head so Rach and I headed back to the boat while the others ventured on to Old Fashioned which was the old crews’ local. The next day I heard tales of some excitable dancing from Alec … continuing with the bar name the music was from the 50’s and Alec was producing some crazy twists and jumps with two local women who looked aged 19 from behind however could have easily been born in the Before Christ era when face to face.

Lamp Street

We’ve also managed to find time to join a gym to avoid  the dreaded ‘stewardess bum’ and have taken to the yoga class where Lorna keeps thinking the woman is saying “Ishmael” when really she is saying “inhale” and “exhale” in Greek and she wont believe me that Ishmael is actually an Arabic boys name.  We have also learnt how to say “cheers”. In greek it is yammas, and our waiter, Yannis, taught us. Yannis means John so between yammasing, yannis and john, when we toast our Freddichino’s – some delicious coffee/chocolate sensation -  we now just say John, its so much easier. So John to Greece! Its going to be one hell of a season!

The Crew 2013