Blogs from South Aegean, Greece, Europe - page 73

Here we back on Freedom bobbing around the Mediterranean again. We arrived in a heat-wave and spent the first 2 days doing jobs to make the boat seaworthy and then craned into the water on day 3. We were so relieved to be on the water - it’s just so much cooler. We bought all our heavy supplies whilst we had the hire car for 3 days and filled up with wine, water, milk, beer and the essential gin and tonic!! Most of our early excitement was over the new dinghy and recently over-hauled outboard - goes like a rocket, new water tank and solar panel that both came over in out luggage and now fitted, and the new timber shelves cut to size in B&Q and also squeezed into the luggage. The weather has been ... read more

DAY 78 SAILING DAY 6 Francine gets up at about 3am and checks that the boat has not moved. At 5am the motor starts up. Angela (G) has woken the captain as the boat has moved very close to the small beach. We assume positions and set off for the day. After about an hour Francine goes back to bed as she hardly slept during the night, whilst worrying about the boat hitting the rocks. We are on our way to Santorini. There isn't much wind to begin with but later in the morning we are able to use the sails without the motor. Santorini is one of several ancient volcanoes lying on the southern Aegean volcanic arc. The circular island volcano erupted in about 1450BC causing the centre to sink, leaving a caldera with high ... read more

So now we are in Kos, Greece. Long, long day of travel yesterday as we got to the Santorini airport after a 4 hr airport worker strike (damn socialist-like countries!) and it backed up all the flights, so we were 4 hrs late to Kos and did not do anything except get food and go to sleep at 1am last night. And today they wouldn't let us rent scooters, buggies, 4-wheelers or anything because they said on this island you must have an international license if you are American! Guess it saved money for us and not sure there is really as much to see here as the other places. Very industrialzed/commercialized on the drive in. The Port/Old Town part of Kos is nice though. Last day in Santorini, though, was amazing! Dad chartered a huge ... read more

DAY 71 'KOS WE'RE GOING SAILING We take the BLUE STAR FERRY, a huge vessel on a three hour journey from Rhodes to Kos. We arrive and take a taxi to out lodging for the night. The apartment is 13 km out of Kos town and it sits across the road from the beach and has a really nice swimming pool. However there is no manager on the premises and we have no idea what to do and what room is ours. The people staying there said that they were given a room number and the key was left in the door for their arrival. There two doors with keys in them so we took one room but they had only two beds and we needed three beds. Being bold women we took a mattress from ... read more

Hello Paris! Goodbye Greece! we are now at the Athens airport and ready to board the plane to Paris! Wow! It has been a great experience sailing in Greece. It was windy and we had amazing adventures. Sorry I have not blogged in a while because Wi Fi is very spotty. The pictures and videos are great, Greece is my new favorite country absolutley beautiful counrty. i will miss it.... read more