Thursday 20th September

Well… last night’s activities ended up at our favourite cocktail bar after a great Italian meal. It happened to be karaoke night… Oh dear I hear you say, we know what coming……

Ended up having only 2 hours sleep. Now we know what most of you are thinking… no we weren’t singing until the early hours, we went home just before closing time (and before we got kicked out, but we did own that dance floor…!) and we talked until the morning call to prayers! We can’t believe we haven’t commented on the Muslim call to prayers before! They’re as regular as clockwork (they probably are clockwork) and about as often as 6 times a day. A voice usually starts by saying a one-liner (the call we presume), then there’s a short crackle, a tape evidently is turned on and some strange warbling singing noise vaguely sounding like Elsie (those at Ealing will understand) chants something we have no idea about. All very entertaining until you realise you’ve been up yakking until 5:20am!

Today then, a big day (for Sam, yes he’s the boat lover). Nipped to the shops to get foods for a picnic, then headed to the beach to collect ‘our’ boat. Soon we were captain and first mate in charge of a 75bhp cruise liner!! What a fantastic way to see the coast line!!! The water was beautifully clean and clear enough to see the sea bed through! It was the warmest sea either of us had ever been in, we have no idea what temperature it was, but after a 2 minute deliberation we’ve come to the conclusion it must’ve been around air temperature (31C today) as we didn’t feel the slightest bit different after jumping overboard, apart from wet of course.

We sailed around all the coastline that we had enough fuel for, and stopped in at every cove. We must’ve anchored around 8 times. We were repeatedly stopped by a passing ice-cream vendor on a little boat, amazing, we promised we’d buy one at lunch time. It seemed his job was two-fold; to aid broken down boats and to sell everyone else an ice-cream, “to his members he was the 4th and 5th emergency services”! There was all sorts going on in the stretch of water we were near, large tour boats coming in so passengers could swim, big inflatable sofas being pulled behind massive speedboats, and one kindly sailing salesman who told us to drop anchor and he’d take us to his floating restaurant. Having been so prepared as to have taken a picnic, we stuck to our plans.

Sailing is so much fun (if you can call powering around bays with more horses than should be let loose a small vessel ‘sailing’), Andrew is almost convinced by the whole bit blue wobbly thing.

6 hours later we were back on dry land. Drove around the infamous Blue Lagoon and took some pictures. It’s now completely surrounded by hotels and there’s a fee to enter; however we decided against going since the small bays we’d discovered for ourselves were far better and we didn’t have 600 people swamping us.

Back home now and showered off all the salt! Looking rather pink…

Off to a self-service BBQ for tea tonight, lets hope they don’t throw us on…... Hoping to have a gentle evening to prepare ourselves for our last day tomorrow (sob), where we intend to relax in a Turkish spa (for at least some of the day).

Currently online in the Morning Star looking for places to stay in Greece (on route to Igouminetsa) as well as two nights in Rome for the route home. Any suggestions welcome.

By the way, thanks heaps everyone for the comments. We’re so clued in that we forgot to look at them until this morning! Still, very appreciated, although information regarding such things as ‘green cards’ would’ve been useful BEFORE we left!

El, sorry wrong Tom, but nice, though predictable (for you) answer.

Steve, as always thanks for the enlightenment regarding Mr Cruise, but also wrong.

Kate has it right (well done, ;-)), but blagged the answer off her dad, and anyway probably can’t work out this blog malarkey anyway!

Please try again, and anyone else reading, please feel free to comment on the blog (just hit the ‘comment’ button, although if you’re in Turkey at present it’ll say something like Yeni Gönderi), by way of incentive we’ve extended our generous ‘pencil’ gifts to include all who comment.

Have a great evening all…….

Andrew and Sam!