Week 19 - Christmas with friends

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

Progress on the boat in Italy is slow, perhaps not surprising because of Christmas this week, but we did get the Letter of Intent ready and now we are waiting confirmation so we can arrange access for our surveyor to assess the boat for us.

Coronavirus cases continue to drop, there was only 240 new cases today although we suspect that number is impacted by the Christmas break and a likely slowdown in testing, still we’ll take it! They are starting to hint that some things may re-open on the 7th of Jan, although slowly, so let’s see how that turns out.

We spent the week doing the usual walks with people and several larger ones ourselves. One mission was to head to the far side of the Acropolis where there are some large rosemary bushes so we could collect some for Christmas lunch and the chicken Karina was going to roast.

Aside from Christmas, an obvious highlight, the other was Stavros Niarchos park. It was a little bit of an expedition to get there, involving two trains and a bus, but it was the first time in a while we’ve been out of our immediate neighbourhood and we really enjoyed it. The sun was shining and the weather was fantastic. We walked with Erik throughout the entire thing and enjoyed something quite modern in Greece — it opened in 2017.

We’ve mentioned before there are a lot of building projects going on during shutdown. One thing that’s been amusing is the number of these that involve what in most other European countries would be considered unsafe building practices!

We’ve seen people hanging off the top of buildings, wielding a jigsaw one handed while holding the wood you’re cutting up vertically and ladders leaning out so far at the base it needs two people to hold it so you can climb.

Christmas, although obviously a little sad that we couldn’t be with the kids was really very special and we had a wonderful time with our friends. Legitimately for a change as they allowed up to 9 people to gather for a Christmas celebration.

On Saturday night we headed out for an evening walk with a new friend we met a couple of weeks back, Cassie. It was good to be out after dark again (although only 5.30pm!) and see all the Christmas lights.

We still remain impressed by how they are ruins everywhere in Athens. There is an ancient river running through Monistiraki Square and we’ve seen the ruins from above through some very dirty glass, but we realised on Thursday that you can actually access them through the train station. It’s an interesting juxtaposition to see the modern train with these ancient ruins together in the one location.

Hopefully everyone has had a happy and safe Christmas. We have no immediate plans other than to continue to chase this boat in Italy and countdown towards the 7th when hopefully we’ll get a few more freedoms back again. That said, Greece is currently one of the best countries in Europe in terms of handling the coronavirus, so there’s not too much to complain about here.

Until next time,

Tim & Karina