TYW Day 2: The Day We Learned to Sail

Our boat, the Freja (which for some reason just reminded me of Franzia, I’m not really sure why, but given the amount of “slap the bag” we played on board, I guess it was appropriate) is a 40 ft Bavaria. That’s seriously everything I know about it. It’s a boat, it floats, it has sails, an engine and a place where we can cook, sit and sleep. Yay for people who know nothing about sailing but still...

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TYW Day 1: Sit Around and do Nothing

We planned this day all wrong. Call it a bit of Christmas Eve jitters, but we were awake and out of the hotel as fast as possible on Saturday morning in an attempt to arrive at the port in Lavrio (Λαύριο) and get our trip started off immediately. What we didn’t know, is that the skippers are required to get on your boat, and our skipper wasn’t told to be in Lavrio until 4 PM. Cue 6 hours of sitting on the dock...

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Meet a Gypsy, Love a Gypsy, Pay a Gypsy

Cheeks and the more obvious Abs. Those have pretty much been my consistent nicknames since forever. Cheeks a variant on Chica, coming from an odd encounter with my high school football coach. Interpret that how you will. Abs. Well. If you can’t figure that one out. You’re stupid. Of course there have been others, or people specific names. Emily and Jennifer call me Gabbey or Gabbeygail. My guy friends...

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A Little Yacht Week Disclaimer

Since I will be posting a shit ton of stuff in the next couple weeks. I want to spend a little bit of time thanking the people who made everything so great. First off, I did not take all of the photos in the Yacht Week posts. I have republished them with permission from my dear Yacht Week participants as seen in the following group picture of our crew. From Left to Right: Alisa Greene, Jon Farr, Mitch Hall...

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Yacht Week 2011: Greece Week 31

I will attempt now to explain to you what I willingly subjected myself to for 8 days on my most recent Greece holiday. You know those vacation packages set up for families where you rent a mobile home for a week and you are given a map with several destinations through, say, the Rocky Mountains, that you should visit and each night you meet up with all the other families that are driving around in their rented...

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Shortest Way to the Infinity Pool: Straight through the Riot Police

As I scrambled off the bus in Athens, barely alive from my Tylenol PM + Valium coma, I realized I had no idea where I was. Once again, I was falsified into believing that my bus would arrive... well... at the bus station. Bus stations are easy to navigate, often have a conveniently placed map of the city in some ominous graffiti covered Plexiglas case, and more importantly, are accustomed to English speaking dumbfracks like...

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How to get from Croatia to Greece by Bus

My end destination was always Greece. And I had originally planned on flying straight there. But before I booked a ticket, I researched immigration into Greece and found very quickly that there are several cases of Greece being one of the toughest countries to gain entry into as a non-EU citizen because of lazy borders in the past. As I would come to find out, the Greeks didn’t give a shite who I was or where I was...

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The Longest Bus Ride in My Life

Now we get to the part of the trip I was dreading the most. Not only is this the notorious 17 hour bus ride I had heard about, but it’s also the point where I have to attempt to illegally cross back into the EU/Schengen Europe. I am terrified, to put it lightly. I found the tourist office pretty quickly. The owner didn’t speak English, but he did understand when I pointed to Athens on a map. He wrote out €30 on a piece of paper and...

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