How awesome was it to not set an alarm and just wake up
naturally with the sun streaming in through the porthole. Soon after I awoke at
about 7am I heard a beep beep on my phone and found a message that said
“Welcome to Albania” from Vodafone. I looked outside the window and saw we were
quite near land. We finally dragged ourselves out of bed at 8.30am to get ready
to join the others for breakfast at 9. And what a breakfast it was! Poached
egg, bacon, bread roll, beautiful fresh croissant, tea and (wait for
it)…freshly squeezed orange juice! By far the tastiest breakfast so far on the
trip! The freshly squeezed orange juice was amazing, especially after the
watered down cordial that passes for juice at most hotels.
While we were eating breakfast we had docked at some town,
presumably in Albania, whose name I didn’t quite catch but seemed to end in
“ski”. They make reasonably regular announcements over the PA system in 4
different languages that mysteriously all sound the same to me. Unfortunately I
can only decipher that they are speaking in English when they say “thank you”,
a signal that the message in English has just concluded! Anyway, we wandered up
to the top deck to have a look but scurried back down as the ship was about to
leave as Patricia had warned us that heaps of black soot comes out of the funnel
at first when it takes off and covers you in dust – something I thought I could
do without. So it was back to the room for more reading – Carly has read 3
books since yesterday and I have read the second of the Hunger Games books. I
knew if it was anything like the first one I wouldn’t be able to put it down so
I saved it up for this time knowing I would have lots of reading opportunities
(to say the least!) I’m now onto another book but may save the third Hunger
Games book for the return ferry trip in a few days’ time.
After a shared lunch of spaghetti bolognaise (we learnt
yesterday that the servings are way too large for one person!) we packed up our
gear and hung out in the bar watching a Greek TV show called “Goal” – we
couldn’t understand a word but a goal is a goal in any language and they showed
some really good ones. Others from our group gradually gathered at the
appointed time and I had an interesting conversation with a guy from the
Philippines who was also very excited to go to Greece. His entire knowledge of
Greece seemed to come from movies – Helen of Troy, The 300, and a few others I
had never heard of – so we shared our knowledge – me from doing ancient history
at school and he from the silver screen.
At 4pm we were off the boat/ship/ferry (only one hour late)
and then we had about a 130km drive to Olympia our destination for this
evening. What a charming little village! Only one street really, but very
friendly and everyone speaks English – let’s face it, their only industry is tourism
and that would mainly be groups like ours. Apparently most of them will close
their shops tomorrow for the winter. We picked up some souvenirs but the best
buy of the whole trip was tropical flavoured chewing gum. Many people would
know how devastated I have been since the demise of this delicacy in Australia.
James and Carly even trolled through the internet at home trying to find me
some all to no avail. So imagine my delight to discover that a small Greek
village will be the saviour of my taste buds! Although somewhat embarrassed I
couldn’t help myself and I bought 10 packets from the small supermarket here. The
poor guy looked a little startled but just laughed when I explained that it is
no longer available in Australia and I needed to stock up.
Back at the hotel we were unsuccessful in making the Wi-Fi
work so we’ll have to wait until Athens and hope for the best. Greece is in a
bit of turmoil at the moment (general strikes, riots, one in four unemployed)
so this is probably the last thing they care about at the moment. At dinner we
were chatting with a couple of ladies we have become friendly with and
discovered that one of the ladies is the sister of Denise Scott, the comedian.
She entertained us with stories of Denise and told us about some books she has
written – I’ll have to download them to the kindle next time we have Wi-Fi.
I can’t believe I’m in Greece!
No comments:
Post a Comment