It’s definitely going to take us some time to get used to the European “day”, which starts and ends later. Nobody takes appointments for anything until at least 1100 on any given day, restaurants open much later for dinner and the days are definitely getting longer. We continue to be shocked at noticing the time when it’s already 1900, when it feels like it’s still the middle of the afternoon. The advantage, though, which suits us just fine, is that we’re barely crawling out of bed for breakfast at 0900 and it’s around 1000 before we’ve even started to get ourselves ready for the day. As Roy remarked this morning: “I can’t believe how well I’m sleeping here, all warm and cosy”; makes a fabulous change to sweating profusely, even with the cabin fan set on its highest speed and hoping for the slightest breeze to come through the hatch to help cool you down.
We had an exciting and somewhat eventful day. This morning, while Elaine prepared breakfast, Roy booked all our flights. It’ll be quite the trek around the globe, but worth every penny spent. It certainly helped, though, that we were also able to use most of our 250,000 air-miles we’d collected over the past three years.
After breakfast we dropped off our ironing, then took the short walk into town to the hairdresser. Since we were a little early, we enjoyed a Turkish tea at one of the little cafés. By the time Elaine returned to the café, Roy didn’t recognise her and to be truthful, Elaine was delighted to resemble her old self again! Given that this was her first trip to a hairdressing salon in two years, it certainly was a transformation!
From there we stopped by a local butcher, where we purchased some lamb chops for dinner; something Roy has been craving since we arrived in Turkey.
We then returned to Paw Paw to enjoy some of the delicious fruit we’d bought at the Saturday Market for lunch. It’s fair to say, although we’ve enjoyed delicious fruits in various parts of the world, including recently in Egypt, the strawberries, oranges and pears we’ve had here are so sweet and juicy, it’s difficult not to overindulge.
We both, however, needed another afternoon nap. Even though we’re both sleeping well at night, we’re still requiring a nap, but hopefully that alleviates soon.
Feeling refreshed again, Roy secured the mainsail in the stackpack and Elaine enjoyed a chat to her folks in Ireland to wish them a Happy 61st Wedding Anniversary. It was hard to believe that a year had passed since we had our family Zoom celebration for their Diamond Anniversary. By then it was time to meet our agent to complete the next steps of our immigration process, while enjoying a refreshment in one of the garden restaurants.
Before our day came to a close, though, we bumped into Kay, off Mai Tai, and enjoyed a quick chat before cruisers, Janet and Steve, who’ve lived in South Africa for the past 40 years, stopped by Paw Paw to introduce themselves and say hello. It was another lovely surprise, just a few minutes after we’d commented to each other on how pleasant it was to be back in an active cruising community again.
