After Duncan secured the boat cabin, the seven of us headed to the only open café for a late lunch.
‘Hey, I’m going over to the supermarket after we eat,’ I said to Josh who sat next to me. ‘Wanna come? Stock up on some essentials – like food?’ He was up for it, and we agreed to leave as soon as we’d finished eating.
We were sitting outside on plastic garden furniture so tired, it should have been sent to the dump years before. We did have a gorgeous view of the port and its neighbouring beach, and it was a much prettier port than Vlychada, but we were the only patrons at the only open café. Where was everyone?
I asked Duncan. ‘Gone,’ he replied. Okay, Captain Obvious.
‘Where? Why?’
‘This is actually one of the most touristy islands – lots of kids – but they’re usually gone by mid-August – back to uni, most of them.’ It was the tail-end of August, so that explained why the town was deserted. I hoped when we got to other ports, they’d be a little livelier. I was all for relaxation, but I also wanted to get amongst the Greeks and experience some local flavour.
Speaking of which, a Greek woman appeared like an apparition and threw laminated menus onto the table. Starving after our pauper’s breakfast, I practically snatched one up. It was sticky to the touch, but at least it matched the table, which was dotted with unidentifiable splotches of goop. I flicked through it, reading the bastardised English, and the others did the same. The woman hovered impatiently while we turned its many pages.
I was craving something, but couldn’t find it on the menu. I caught her eye by waving at her, ‘Kalispera – hello – do you have dolmades, efharisto?’ A look of utter puzzlement crossed her face. I said it more slowly, ‘Dol-ma-deez?’ The puzzlement remained, and she turned to the others to signal they should order something – as in, she didn’t understand me and the best way to deal with me, was to ignore me altogether.
Duncan stepped in and ordered enough food for all of us, plus seven beers. He was so charming in the way he spoke to her that I even saw the corner of her mouth twitch into the semblance of a smile. But what about the dolmades? I love dolmades, and I was in Greece. Could I not get some dolmades? PLEASE!
She came back out a few minutes later with our beers and Marie, the goddess that she was, tried to support my dolmadic efforts. ‘Excuse me, we’d really like an order of dolmades if you have them,’ she said in her most-enunciated North American accent.
The frown returned to the woman’s face, and she left without saying or doing anything to indicate that dolmades were on their way. But it turns out they were! A few minutes later again, she pretty much tossed a plate of them onto the table. Dolmades!
But I was wrong.
‘Doll-mah-dezzz,’ she said at me slowly. Then she turned on her heels and huffed away. Right then, I guess I’d been told.
The doll-mah-dezzz were delicious, by the way.
After we finished eating, Josh and I told the others we were heading to the supermarket. We asked if anyone wanted to come, but the others seemed happy to linger and have more beer. Duncan had everyone put twenty euros each into a pile on the table – our kitty for the shared food. By default, I was now in charge of said kitty for breakfasts, snacks and lunches on the boat. I was also under strict instructions to get beer, but that was just for Duncan. He slipped me an extra twenty.
‘Any other requests?’ I asked, getting a small notebook out of my bag.
‘Water,’ said Duncan. ‘Bottled water and lots of it.’ I wrote down ‘water – LOTS’. Then I wondered how we would carry lots of water back to the boat.
‘Tzatziki,’ said Marie. ‘Oh, and something to eat it on – bread, I guess? Oh, and tomatoes.’
‘Oh god yes,’ I replied. I underlined tomatoes three times.
‘Snacks,’ replied Hannah, unhelpfully.
‘What snacks?’
‘I don’t know. Whatever they have. Just snacks.’ Great. So far, being on kitty duty sucked.
‘I’ll help figure it out,’ said the cute guy next to me. I looked up at him – gosh, he was tall – and he was smiling down at me, damn him.
‘Right,’ I said, tidying up the pile of cash and putting it into my bag. ‘We will see you back at the boat.’
I cringed a little as Hannah called out after us, ‘Have fun, you two. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’ Wonderful – she was still running with the whole ‘you look like a couple’ thing.
The grocery store was a couple of blocks away from the café, and Josh grabbed a trolley when we got inside. Walking the aisles side by side, we stocked up on breakfast foods – muesli, cereal, jam, bread, peanut butter, milk, yoghurt – they do just call it ‘yoghurt’, by the way, rather than ‘Greek yoghurt’. As we tried to guess what the others might enjoy, we discovered we liked a lot of the same things.
Snacks were a little trickier than breakfast, but we found crackers, cookies, nuts, chocolate, and fresh fruit. I hoped Hannah would approve – I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of my roomie. For lunches, we went with the stuff for Greek salad, pita, tzatziki, cured meats and extra tomatoes. So far, the shopping experience was exactly like shopping back home in Sydney, which I admit was a little disappointing. I had been looking forward to a more authentic experience – local markets, having the grocer select the best tomatoes for me – but this shop was obviously catering to the tourist crowd.
Then we got to the liquor aisle. ‘Oh my god. Look at how cheap it all is!’ I exclaimed, immediately realising how I must have sounded. But the prices were ridiculous – about half of what we would pay in Australia. And right in the middle of the middle shelf was a familiar, pretty blue bottle. As I reached for the Bombay Sapphire gin, so did Josh. I looked at him. ‘Hey! That’s my fave.’
‘That’s my favourite too,’ he replied.
‘No way.’
‘Way.’
‘That’s brilliant – we can share. And it’s only seventeen euros. That’s like …’ I tried to do the conversion to dollars and came up short ‘… cheap.’
‘For sure.’
Then I had a real brainwave. ‘We should get two.’
‘Will we drink two?’ he asked.
‘Even if we don’t, the others will. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re sailing with a bunch of drinkers – and that’s not even including Patricia.’
‘I have noticed that, yes.’
‘And thank god!’ He laughed at my effusiveness. ‘Can you imagine the alternative? Being on a boat with a bunch of teetotallers? I mean, kill me now!’
‘Torture.’ I think he may have been making fun of me, but I didn’t care.
‘Exactly.’
We got two. And beer for Duncan.
I looked down at our nearly full trolley. Did we have enough food? I hated the thought of running out while we were in the middle of the ocean. Yes, I do know the Aegean Sea is not an ocean, but I figured that running out of food on any body of water would be a bad thing.
‘Is this enough?’ I asked my kitty buddy.
He responded by laughing at me.
‘Uh, yes, probably for the rest of the trip and I am pretty sure there will be other grocery stores in our future if we run out of anything.’
‘How