So everyone should come to Greece. The cities and towns try hard to be clean. The people seem to value aesthetics and whitewash their homes frequently. There is less vandalism than there was in Italy. They care about ambiance in their restaurants. There are even (weak) attempts to make non-smoking sections! Also, if you have kids in tow, you are quickly treated like one of the family. And the free stuff! Leave about 15 extra minutes to leave the restaurant, as you will be supplied various FREE dessert drinks and pastries. Americans must restrain themselves from calculating diminishing profit margins and worrying.
The Burnetts have also found the food here to be incredibly underrated. “Simple seasonings on lots of meat” doesn’t sound that interesting, but everything we’ve had so far has been cooked and seasoned perfectly! Greg and Mel have also discovered Cretan halloumi cheese, which you can fry or grill. It eats like a juicy slab of meat. The other night Greg and Mel ate nothing but cheese. Our intestines found it unnatural, but our mouths didn’t care. Mel will do an extra workout. Oh, F’ it! She’ll just get a little fatter.
We have also met the loveliest people. To commemorate 9/11, on 9/12 of course because we are cruisers and have no idea what day it is, the Burnetts donated diapers and other desired sundries to the City Plaza Hotel in Athens, an abandoned hotel housing about 400 refugees. We found an English-speaking cabdriver who merrily shuttled us to the supermarket and then to the hotel in the middle of Athens, discussing with us avidly the history and politics of Greece. Only after an hour in his cab did we learn he was a former professional soccer goalie who played for 23 years, and he had helped out the refugees himself. We raise a glass of ouzo to you, Giannis!
The Burnetts are now in the Greek Islands, awaiting the arrival of our next lucky guest, who wins the award for most strategic vacation planning ever! On the way there we spent a day at Cape Sounion, anchored out by an ancient Temple of Poseidon. The best part about Sounion is that they light the temple up at night! Mel wanted to sacrifice the lone wool sock that survived the Atlantic trip, but that would be littering, so we sacrificed some fresh water instead. That’s pretty important, Poseidon.
Not everything in the Greek Islands is awesome, however. We have had trouble locating sour cream. Yes, we know we can make it by hand…ugh. Also, cruisers of the Med would appreciate the fact that Mel ran out of BOTH Cuki’s AND Pappy’s the night there was a ton of chili leftovers! Egad!
Mel has become a little self-conscious now that her KevinMD article has come out. She wants the world to know that her life now isn’t always basking in the sun and looking at beautiful things. Well, okay, most of it is. But today, she had a FAIL. It happened in homeschool. She set herself up for it, of course. She got all excited at first. Allie’s science course had her scheduled for an experiment that involved paper towels, rubbing alcohol, water, thermometers, and a fan. “Score!” Mel thought, “We have all of those things! We can finally do an experiment!” So she and Allie set everything up. They were going to measure the temperature of paper towels soaked in water or rubbing alcohol over time. Then Allie asked, “How do we use these thermometers?” “Hooray! Learning opportunity!” Mel thought. She grabbed a thermometer, which she had pulled out of her massive med kit that she has because she is a doctor after all, and explained to Allie…”Uh, the dots turn color and indicate the temperature…except…these thermometers only measure temps between 96 and 104 degrees…and they’ve already been activated and indicated 104 degrees because I have stored them in our hot hull…so we can’t do this experiment!” FAIL.
Time to burn some data and find a video of the experiment on the internet instead! Boatlife.
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