Aegean « nakedthanks.com

Posts Tagged ‘Aegean’

Karin thanks the most tolerant boat cruising the Aegean

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

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Rain. Vodka. Baby Land. Security pulling our legs – literally. A synchronized pantomime to Celine Dion. These are the memories that come flooding back to me when I think about my trip across the Aegean Sea with my wonderful partner in crime Mary-Alice. It was the summer we decided to drop everything (including our boyfriends) and travel across land and sea from Hong Kong to Paris. Clearly we had a few mishaps along the way. But when I look back, all I can remember is the good stuff. Isn’t selective memory lovely that way?

One of the most r.i.d.i.c.u.l.o.u.s. legs of our trip was when we took a boat from Athens to the idyllic island of Santorini. As it is rather expensive to travel from Hong Kong to Paris we tried to do everything as cheaply as possible. This included crawling under turnstiles at a cable car station, being chased by a mustachioed woman from Budapest, me trying to forge my Eurail pass and being threatened with jail time, and a slew of other completely idiotic and often times illegal moves. So with this mentality, when we were faced with a boat across the Aegean, Mary-Al and I decided that we didn’t need to pay for a bed because we were going to stay up all night long partying on deck and would be so drunk that sleeping on a cold plastic bench outdoors would be fun! And it might have been a real rocking good time if the skies hadn’t broken into a torrential all-night-long downpour from hell.

At first vodka took care of our pain. Some creepy Dutch tourists gave us an entire bottle of Absolute and we were very very excited to warm our hearts with the blinding elixir. But a few hours later we were frozen, exhausted and preparing for horrific hangovers. If we had slept outside, I would probably be floating in the Aegean. Thank god we had the genius idea to break into “Baby Land” the children’s daycare center, and fall asleep inside a plastic castle. But we were soon kicked out. So we took to passing out in hallways in front of the broiler room, stranger’s cabins, and a few other comfy looking nooks. Security tried to drag us away, but we persisted, literally holding onto the rug and making fake snoring noises. And wouldn’t you know it, they finally gave up. What a wonderful staff!

Here we are hiding illegally under the cosy plastic roof on the deck. It would have been so warm and cozy here! If only we had paid the $15 extra!

Here we are hiding illegally under the sturdy plastic roof on the deck. It would have been so warm and cozy here! If only we had paid the $15 extra.

Ahhhh, here we go. Random man, bottle of vodka, incredibly drunken expression. And this was about 12 hours before we made our getaway to Baby Land for a little snooze.