Greek Dancing, Those Girls Style!

Ed. note: posted after return to Canada

We were really bummed to find out that we were going to miss out on the usual Greek Dancing night that Seascape attends in Patmos because of a slightly different itinerary than usual for our trip. Not to worry, those girls can make their own excitement!

Leaving the taverna after dinner in Vathi, I noted that there was a group of Greek boys waving at us from another taverna along the harbour. Having already linked arms with my girls, Jill and Suzanne (an honorary Those Girl), we were a force to be reckoned with. We skillfully evaded the skippers by singing happy birthday serenades to a couple of boats on the jetty, and made our way back to the taverna with the boys.

After sitting down with them and ordering some retsina from the cute barmaid, we realized that we had a little language barrier. All the boys were from Vathi, and none spoke more than a few words of English, and we no more than 5 words in Greek! After a few attempts at communication, I decided that the best way to break through the language barrier was by dancing! Turns out that the barmaid (and her husband who was sitting with us (she was quick to point out his ring to us!)) were professional Greek dancers! After a little switch of the music and the kicking (literally!) of tables out of the way to make a dance floor, we were in business! All three of us got up (Jill after a little prodding and a little more retsina!) and had some dancing lessons. Step forward, step back.. arms up, holding hands...

Once Jill got into the spirit she gestured to the group that she was ready for some plate smashing. Everyone laughed at her, as this is not really common practice in Greece due to the priceyness of plates! However, they obliged her request by smashing empty retsina bottles (by now we had finished quite a few!) onto the cement floor... oh dear with the flying glass! Jill actually ended up gushing blood, with a shard of glass stuck in her leg. Luckily Poppi (the cute barmaid) came to the rescue with a bottle of Johnny Walker Red that she poured on Jill's leg to sterilize the wound! Thank goodness for Greek medicine :)

After we thanked the boys and Poppi extensively for the dancing lessons and free retsina (we tried to pay!), we decided we should head back to the boat for a little nightcap. Apparently we still had a little excess adrenaline going on, because Suzanne and I decided that we needed to do a little midnight cliff jumping! Thank goodness for the kindness of Skippers, who (despite some minor grumbling), will allow themselves to be woken up at 1 am and cajoled into getting up to have brandy and coffee waiting to warm up cliff jumping Greek goddesses! Trust Those Girls to do it up in style!

Tales of seduction on the Aegean Sea

On our last night in Athens (when Jeff arrived) we drank a bit too much wine and on our way back to the hotel, we spontaneously bought some matching bling shoes and even managed to talk the guy down from 35 E to 29 E. We were pretty impressed. with ourselves. Turns out the other 2 girls on our boat also came prepared with some shiny shoes! That's Jill, Suzanne, Marnie and Danni from left to right.

So we arrived at the dock in Leros last Sunday to get on the boat and start our adventures out at sea with Seascape Sailing. We met our skipper, John, and was introduced to our new family for the next week. We are on the boat named Vassilis (nicknamed syphillus due to a former Skipper with quite a reputation!). Our new family are: Jim and Marnie from Toronto, Rafi from LA, Suzanne and Anthony from NY and us, Muffy, Buffy and Tex (Jeff... from florida). That is us and Skipper John below. Looks like he got a lot of sun... maybe also a few too many cocktails!

John told us all the rules and regulations of boat life in about 5 minutes flat. Rule #1 captain gets a beer, rule #2 open the hatches and rule #3 make sure the fenders are in place. We took off and were given our first instructions of removing the fenders and tying clove hitch knots. Yey, we were excited we learned something new! The boat was awesome, the sun was great and I wasn't feeling so hot. Stomach was queasy and i was determined not to get seasick on the first day. There was no way i was going to be a wimp, no way. I tried to rise above it and get over it, but alas my stomach did not agree with me. So I mentioned something to Marnie and she laughed saying I feel terrible too, I just took a ginger pill. Next thing you knew, ginger pills were flying around the boat faster than beer in a highland games tent! Once we were all feeling better, we used our new skills of tying knots to the fenders and getting the boat ready to dock at our first stop, Lipsi. I have no idea what we did there. but i bet it included a pastry item, a drink or two or three, some really great food and perhaps some sightseeing or renting an ATV. As you can see, we really have a good time (and look hot in helmets) when we ride ATVs! We were probably going REALLY fast in this picture thanks to Danni's super driving skills.

This seems to be the order of play for each and every day as I look back to remember what we have done. Sometimes we shake it up and stop and swim and snorkel on the way to another dock, just for shits and giggles. So to make a long blog shorter, that is our life in a nutshell. We get up, shake off the hangover by walking to the WC (only one hole in the ground toilet so far!), we eat, we sail, we swim, we eat, we sail, we dock, we see some sights, we drink Mythos beer, we eat, we dance like greek goddesses, we watch the stars and milky way and we sleep. Then we repeat this exact same thing the very next day.

So some great things we seen are monasteries and blue roof churches and houses and people and we even rented ATV 's one day and scoped out the island. Oh, at this point i should also mention, I have eaten my entire body weight in bread in about 5 days. I think I've set a world record for bread consumption, have decreased my fruit by 98% and i'm still managing to take at least one #2 per day (although we don't talk about that on the boat, our proper British captain thinks us Canadians are crude talking about peeing all the time!), Danielle will be glad to hear that my body systems are working just fine!

So now we're on Kos (island and harbour name), a larger, tourisy island for 2 nights while we switch a bit of crew for the next week into Turkey! We love Greece but are really excited to add another stamp to the passport. We'll be sad to lose some of the peeps on the boat, but we still have the foundation of Muffy, Buffy and Tex to spice things up. And who knows, there may be more tales of seduction on the high seas to come!