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| Chuck and Lori, Your Intrepid Travel Blog Hosts |
We hope you’ve enjoyed our blogs the last few days describing our gulet cruise on the Turkish Aegean. It’s always good to put faces with names, so we thought we’d wind down our blogs on this week of our adventure by showing you the people we so enjoyed the week with, roughly in the order we met them.
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| Luna and Karsten |
Luna (actually spelled Lone) and Karsten, from Denmark. He’s a retired carpenter, she’s a cancer-surviving artist. Together they ran a business importing wine to Denmark with the business model of selling labels to restaurants with the assurances that customers couldn’t buy the same labels in the grocery store. Hmm, very interesting.
Luna had no fear in trying to speak English, though she frequently turned to Karsten (“Mr. Google”) for help finding just the right word. They were a hoot, especially when, walking through Bodrum with us, I suggested to Lori that we could go into a dance club and “boogie” the night away; Luna said, “What is ‘boogie’?” With her accent, it was the funniest thing I’ve heard in quite some time, though you might have had to be there. But then later, when Lori asked her if she knew what Spam was (you know, the canned meat) and Luna replied, “Yes, that’s what the man has to make the babies”…well, that was priceless whether you were there or not.
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| Debbie and Brian |
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| Elisabeth and Garretsch |
Elisabeth, aka Else, and Garretsch, from the Netherlands. Having celebrated their 44th anniversary this past September 15th, they were the senior couple on the boat, and their happiness together was abundantly evident. Like us, they married young at 20, and like us, it appears to have “stuck”. They were Blue Cruise veterans, with several cruises under their belts. Retired now, he worked in finance for Dow and she doesn’t eat carbs. They regularly bragged of their grandchildren in Switzerland, they were never short on smiles, and Garretsch’s sense of humor and deep laugh was infectious.
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| Isabelle and Jan |
Isabelle and Jan, from Portugal. They were both from Northern Portugal, actually not too far from where we spent most of June. But originally Isabelle was from Mozambique (and so enjoyed sharing Africa news with Brian and Debbie), and Jan was from the Netherlands. Jan’s career was as a NATO liaison from the Dutch army, and he had plenty of fascinating stories to share, particularly of his time working with the Russians and Americans in the war in Bosnia and Kosovo. Jan was particularly interested in satellite spotting, but unfortunately I never got to show him a really good one. He was one of the three who celebrated birthdays on our cruise.
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| “The Italians”: (L to R) Yilmoz (actually one of the crew), Jeansa, Kristiana, Dario, and Barbara |
The Italians. They spoke English probably much better than they thought they did, but in typical European fashion they were timid about speaking in anything less than perfect English. And we readily admit: when your native language is the suave and beautiful Italian, English is practically vulgar in comparison. They were four friends from Genoa, on the northwestern Italian coast, and thanks to Dario in particular we now know that Genoa is a great dive destination (note to self…Genoa, dive destination, Italian food and wine, check). Jeansa was another of the three celebrating a birthday on our cruise, her 50th as a matter of fact.
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| Our Crew: ?m?r the cook, Captain Ey?p, and Yilmoz, All Around Great Guy |
Our crew was great: always helpful and smiling. They were great ambassadors for their country and terrific hosts. Many thanks again to Captain Ey?p, Yilmoz, and ?m?r.
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| ?m?r the Cook: A Good Cook Means a Great Cruise |
