Aegina

We booked the sailing school back in January, and we had booked bunk beds. A few days before starting we got an email from the school with some bad news - the boat with the bunks was broken. They asked if we would mind sharing if we were put in the master suite (our own bathroom). We had been so looking forward to sailing that we agreed.

Aegina is a small island just south of Athens and is known for its pistachios. As we got off our ferry we saw how seriously they took their pistachios! (we found out later that it was the pistachio festival)

Everywhere you walked there was pistachio this and pistachio that - hand cream, shampoo, rings, bracelets, pesto, nutella, hulled, unhulled, ice cream, pistachio everything! Yes, they were delicious!


We dropped off our bags at the sailing school's office and decided to see the ancient ruins of the old city.

For once there weren't a lot of people there, probably because it was high noon and blisteringly hot. The views of the sea were spectacular, but we were both dead tired. So we left and found a shady spot near the beach to have a wee snooze.

It was just what we needed. Revitalised we slowly made our way back to the sailing school office to meet our instructor and get our gear on the boat.

Jake, our instructor led us to our boat, Challenger (a Bavaria 42 Cruiser, for those who are into that). Our Master Suite was quite nice indeed!

Dominique and I were the only two who were there for the ''Competent Crew'' course, the other three - a couple from England and a gent from Switzerland were there for the ''Day Skipper'' course. They do this on all the boats so that the more experienced folks can get practice ordering folks around (joking).

After a safety briefing, and lessons on how to use the showers and heads (the loo for you land lubbers) we went to a local restaurant for dinner with the other students and instructors. There were three other sailboats with 15 students all up.

They said there was going to be ''good wind for sailing'' on the morrow. Little did we know....