Lefkada, Vlyho, #boatlife

hello! i am back! this is going to be the first (second) of many annoying posts about my trip.

what i showed you before was a taste of life in Lefkada. Lefkada is an island, and there is a main city, also called Lefkada. confusing, i know. so anyway, we started in Lefkada (the city) and travelled around Lefkada (the island), as well as some other islands. more on that later.

first things first, you gotta learn how to throw the rope. this is very important. there is a special way to coil rope so that it doesn't turn into figure eights, and also so that it's easy to throw a long distance to spiros/stavros/babi/apolstoli/whoever is on the dock (these are the only names of every male i encountered in greece).

my grandfather is essentially a walking encyclopedia. was admitted to MIT at the age of 16 and is the smartest person i know. when he talks, you listen, and you try to mentally record it.



then we were off. the first section of our trip was going from Lefkada (city) to Vlyho, a harbour where you anchor and take the dingy to wherever you need to go.







the cabin



my grandparents have sailed over 30,000 miles on this boat. across the sea and back,  and then again.





i fell into boat life quickly and easily. my grandma said i figured boat stuff out faster than anyone who's ever been on their boat. i jumped for joy (inside. you don't jump on a moving boat). this happened probably because i got to do a lot of this:











"this" being laze around on the deck while the sun shone and the waves gently rocked. i could be a professional "this"-doer pretty happily.

church on the water in the middle of nowhere:




this boat was awesome:



greece is very mountainous, i did not know this. i sighed a lot, as you can imagine.







all snacks on deck:

 

i slept in the front cabin a.k.a the bounciest part of the boat. there was one night i had to move up to the deck because at 3am i was still struggling to hold down barf.



there is a trap door/window from the front cabin to the deck. note beautiful scenery in reflection.



this is Vlyho, also called "the pool". this shot is taken from one of the restaurants in the bay. the owner's wife was in Athens (a 6 hour drive away) having had a baby a few days prior. he had not yet met the baby because he had to stay and run the restaurant. crazy.

i took a 360 of it. you can hear a) the wind, sorry not much i can do about that on an iphone b) french partiers c) a rooster that crowed all day. i wish you could hear the sheep, which bleated incessantly.



we only spent one night here, with my grandfather at the age he's at, it's too hard to get down into the dingy so it's better to be docked. the next day we went to my new favourite place in the world: syvota.

it will have to wait as i am catching up on five million emails at work. reality is harsh. to soften the blow of it i am going to get wicked drunk tonight and watch the three episodes of girls that i haven't seen yet. thank god there is that. THANK GOD.

i've had nightmares every night (multiple times a night) for a week. horrible, gruesome, seriously disturbed nightmares. jet lag, probably.