Dearest family and friends,

Now that we've been in Greece for over a month, we're quite used to those aspects of Greek life that were initially in such stark contrast to Turkey. Our first port was in Mytilini on the island of Lesvos, which is a bustling, university town. Within the first 2 hours, very obvious differences were:
Women wearing skimpy clothing, waiting tables in restaurants and working in and running shops
Food: MUCH more expensive than Turkey -- like 2x for some things -- both in the restaurants and in the grocery stores.
Pork gyros (vs lamb-beef doner kabobs)
Greek Salads and BACON! yumyum
Town quays, or the infamous greek unfinished marinas*: free or very cheap (hooray!, makes up for the higher priced food!)
HOURS: In Greece, stores are closed between 2 and 6pm, saturday afternoons and all day sunday. In Turkey, everything is open all the time, and we can eat in a restaurant any time of day. Turks don't take siestas. SOME stores are closed on Sundays in Turkey.
In Greece, there are more pet dogs; although in Turkey, we've never been denied entry to a restaurant with zoey. Turkey's world-famous hospitality applies to the patron's pets as well.
Infrequent church bells vs. Turkey's muezzin call to prayer 5 times a day.
In Greece, people are friendly, but not as helpful as in Turkey. Case in point: we got a flat tire on a rental car. After enquiring at a store about the whereabouts of the nearest gas station, Chuck and Martin proceeded to walk the 2kms, carrying the tire between them on Chuck's walking stick. I can almost guarantee that in Turkey, the shopkeeper would have called his brother to come give them a ride... or some other helpful solution.
Fewer laundromats, so i'm doing good old hand-washing again in my deep double galley sinks. Doing sheets and towels is a real bit*h!
And happily, in Greece there are more open, unsecured Wireless Networks (WIFI's) to tap into from the convenience of our boat; and, thanks to our big external antennas, we can even access them from anchorages!
* Ref. the unfinished marinas mentioned above: In all the EU countries that we've been to, there are always big signs explaining that such and such project was funded by the EU regional development funds. I think every harbour in Portugal and Spain had been developed with the help of EU funds. They were finished projects, and the enterprise was collecting fees and making a profit. Greece, too, was the recipient of dev funds for marinas. After all, with ALL THAT COASTLINE in ALL THOSE islands, building marinas for ALL THOSE CRUISERS would make a lot of sense. The EU provides 80% of the projected cost. Well, in Greece, once those funds were gone, they never kicked in their own 20% to finish the job. As a result, there are many, many unfinished marinas. In the very least, there's a breakwater/concrete wall built, but no electricity, water, bathrooms, floating docks with mooring lines. The good news is that there's no charge to be able to at least tie up somewhere with shelter. i just don't get it.

We are currently tied up on the wall in little Lipsi, on Lipsi Island in the Dodecanese Island group, about 10 miles west of Turkey. Upon leaving Canakkale, Turkey on the Dardanelles, we headed to Lesvos and spent about 2 weeks there. We LOVED being tied up to the wall in Mytilini. We and our buddies, Martin and Sandy rented a car and explored the island. We were there at the height of the summer vacation season: Aug. 15th. we took a bus up to the little town of Agiassos on Aug. 14th to experience the big celebration marking the eve of the Virgin's Ascension. There was to be a candlelight procession very late at night. Since we couldn't find a suitable place to eat dinner, we went back to Mytilini early and ate the international food: pizza! We did see a procession of the greek orthodox priests, though. After Lesvos, the next island to the south was Khios. Unfortunately, the town harbour didn't offer good protection from the prevailing north winds, so we had to stay in one of those unfinished marinas which was a LONG WALK out of town. It was actually pretty bleak. And our boats were filthy after being there for a week. But! we rented a car for 4 days at a really good price (good price = 20 euros/day, which is about $30/day. (i remember wistfully those wonderful $19.95 weekend deals that Enterprise Car leasing used to offer in the states! though i'm sure they're long gone now, too.) We enjoyed exploring the island. There were some wonderful little medieval mountaintop towns. These islands were occupied by greeks, romans, byzantines, then of course the Ottomans which featured heavily in a very bloody 19th century: lots of Greek uprisings which resulted in serious reprisals by the Turks. It's almost 200 years later; the Ottoman empire has been gone for almost 100 years; it was replaced by a very progressive Turkish government in the 1920's created by the famous Mustafa Kemal -- "Ataturk." but. The Greeks still hate the Turks.

ANYWAY, after Khios, we visited Samos and stayed in the anchorage in the town of Pythagorio for about a week. That was the first place we noticed it really started to get crowded with cruisers again..... and charter-boaters, too. There were so few cruisers and no charterers in the Black Sea and in the Sea of Marmara, that we got spoiled by not having to worry about too-crowded town quays or too-crowded anchorages. Well that's all changed now. Welcome to September in the Dodecanese islands! We'll be making pretty short sailing hops down the island chain (like less than 20 miles between islands, usually). Ultimately, we'll end up "back home" in Marmaris, Turkey by November 1st, so, that's 6 more weeks of leisurely island hopping. The Meltemi (fierce north winds) are still blowing regularly, but as long as they're not too strong (like, over 23 knots), it usually makes for a decent sail since this island group pretty much runs from north to south. We continue to enjoy cruising with Sandy and Martin on "Mystique." Compatible tastes, compatible political views, compatible just about everything! It's great.

Well i better get the photos ready so I can include the link here in the note.
DONE!

http://picasaweb.google.com/chaliventures/TheGreekIslandsSummer2009?feat=directlink

Ta Ta, til the next time....

XOXOXOXOXO
Alison, Chuck and Zoey of course