Montpellier: Greece: Spring Break '09

Phew, so much has happened in the past few weeks!

I sailed the Ionian Sea and the Greek islands with some of the most amazing people in the world last week. The trip could not have been more perfect, and I think I'll always wish I were back on that silly boat.

Jess, Bridget, Kate, and I started our day of travel on Thursday night on a train to Marseille. After trying to find our hotel, we decided to just give up and spend the night at the airport. This seemed like an ok idea at the time, but really, it turned out to be a bad idea. We tried many different sleeping positions, curled up in chairs, curled up on the cold, hard, tile floor... in a nut shell we didn't really get an sleep Thursday night. We had a flight early Friday morning to Prague where we had a short layover and then a flight to Athens. During our layover in Prague we ate at a breakfast restaurant in the airport and it was mediocre at best, but a TERRIBLE decision. Our waiter came by and put a bread basket on our table (like most restaurants do) so naturally, we ate it. He also gave us bottled water when we asked for water. Long story short, our breakfast cost us 20E EACH because he charged us for the bread, the water, and he also decided to add his own tip onto our tabs. SO annoying. Oh well, at least we got some food in us. We got our flight from Prague to Athens and of course, Kate's baggage was lost. Our trip was not starting well. We found Huston and Kara, the others that were traveling with us, and ended up just giving the airport our number in hopes they'd locate the bag. We still had a 5 1/2 hour bus ride to the port, and we were all exhausted. We FINALLY arrived at our boat at 2am on Saturday and we were so relieved to be there.

Our boat was super cute, and was named "Moonshine." Bridget and I shared a very small cabin at the front of the boat, Jess and Kate had one next to ours (but they slept in the living room/kitchen every night), Huston and Kara had one of the cabins at the back of the boat, and the other cabin had a sign that said "Skipper" on it. The beds were really quite tiny, and Bridget and I had more of a wedge. It's ok though, it got cold at night and we got good at cuddling haha.

We woke up the next day to a beautiful sunny day in Greece. We took showers at the port and met our Skipper named Dan, but we called him Skippy or Skip for the entire trip. We made our first grocery run and met a fantastic old woman who gave us excellent advice: Swim well. Go Naked.

And then we set sail...

We could really do whatever we wanted because there were not many boats out since it is the very beginning of the season. Skippy recommended places for us to dock and stay the nights and cool islands where we could explore. We sailed around for awhile and then anchored in a little bay area. Seeing as it was our first day, we all decided to jump in the water. It was SO COLD! It was that kind of cold that when you jump in you feel like your lungs have frozen and you can't breathe. However, we decided to man up and after a few minutes it really didn't feel that bad (whether that meant that we had gone numb and just couldn't feel it or it really got warmer, we're not sure).

That night we docked at a place called Nidri. Turns out this would be our port for interesting nights. Bridget made us a wonderful dinner and then we headed out to a place called Bubbles Bar. We met some of Skippy's friends, and they brought us to another place called Byblos. We had an amazing night of dancing, singing, and meeting English sailors. We returned to Nidri for our last night, which I'll get to later...

The next day we sailed around and found some little caves on random islands that were very cool, but it was kind of overcast and cloudy so we decided not to swim at all or explore too much. Skippy heard from his friends that there was a good place to dock about an hour away, so we headed over to the little town called Sivota. There were typical cute Greek houses with blue shutters and we decided to eat a traditional Greek meal. It was pretty delicious, especially the Greek salad with feta. Mmm.

We basically had the same routine everyday: Wake up, have English breakfast tea with too much sugar, eat granola and yogurt and some fruit, head upstairs to the top of the boat, tan, laugh, talk, sail, eat lunch, tan, laugh, dock somewhere, play cards, eat dinner, hang out, play games, talk... laugh... it was just SO great. The group of people I was with was amazing. We learned so much about each other... we just bonded so well.

Our trip ended again at the same port we started at: Nidri. We played some games before heading back out to Bubbles/Byblos. We met the same crew of crazy English sailors and had another crazy night. I got back to the boat at 5am to pack my things since our taxis were arriving at 6am. We had another long day of travel and we were running on empty. 5 1/2 hour bus ride to the bus station in Athens, 1 hour bus ride to the airport in Athens, flight to Prague, flight to Paris, flight to Marseille, one very very long night spent in a hospital (I'll blog about that later), and then a train ride back to Montpellier the next morning.

All in all it was an amazing trip. I couldn't have asked for better company and I'm so excited for our reunion parties that we've already planned.

Now, I have 28 more days in France before I come home. I'm starting to feel ready to get back to the states, even though I know I'm going to miss this place like crazy. 4 months is a long time to be away from the people you love, though.

Hope all is well back home, I hear spring has sprung, so enjoy the beautiful weather.

Love,
Kelli

Trying to sleep in the airport on our first night