Week 17 - Boat tours in Athens

Adventures in Greece as we pursue the dream of buying a boat and cruising the Mediterranean.

The big news this week is that the lockdown is extended now up until the 7th of January. In some ways this is a relief — it feels like you can plan around it and that it stops being dragged out in a thousand small steps, but in other ways we’re really unprepared for this length of shutdown. The government has opened hairdressers and bookstores and pushed the curfew back to 10pm instead of 9pm, but otherwise it’s more of the same. They are now allowing pickup at retail outlets if you pre-order, but unfortunately no businesses here are really that prepared for it, so we’re not sure how practical this will be in reality.

The weather is still amazing though. Yes, there are more wet days, but they are interspersed with stunning blue skies and 18C–19C temperatures too which makes it all very bearable.

As well as the usual walking around with people, which is always nice to catch up, we did get to do one fun thing this week which is to see some more boats (uh…. exercise, that’s what it was). It was great to remind ourselves again why we’re here (to buy a boat, not stay in an apartment in the centre of town) and we found another model that we liked. Using that information our broker located a slightly more modern version of the boat we saw at a reasonable price but it’s located in Sicily, and of course… lockdown means we can’t get there.

To get to the boat yard involved a lengthy walk past the old airport in Glyfada. It was closed around the Olympics here (so 2004) when the new airport was opened and has been in a state of abandonment ever since. There are big plans for a massive development here, but they’ve never quite got off the ground yet due to the financial crisis and now COVID, although apparently it’s getting serious from next year.

Not every day has perfect weather though, we have needed to rug up on our evening walks a little. Karina had to go complete some (regular boring stuff, just part of getting established here) medical checkups at the hospital on Monday morning and of course that was one of the days where it chose to bucket down so heavily she ended up throwing out the umbrella!

Christmas traditions are always interesting around the world. I’m not sure if it’s COVID related or just “the way it is” but they are only just now putting up the Christmas decorations here, including the front of our apartment (Hugs For All), the stars on our street (thanks for doing that at 1AM in the morning… uuugggh) and just yesterday, the main decorations in Syntagma square.

We’re continuing to have a lot of fun with the advent calendar with our friends, including occasionally sending increasingly ridiculous photos of us opening and sharing what we received.

For now, the next major challenges are working out how to navigate online ordering to try and collect a few additional items to ease the lockdown boredom. We are continuing to negotiate (if they even talk to us!) on the boat we’ve found in Sicily and otherwise continuing to catch up with friends for walks, the occasional meal and otherwise grinding out the next four weeks of lockdown.

Until next time,

Tim & Karina