Oh, my aching liver (redux / reflux)
My eyes popped open at noon, and then again at 13:00. I dragged myself out of bed and headed over to Mikael and Fredrik's room, where my knock woke them up. We were all pretty bleary, but eventually we were on our way to Santa Maria beach, after pausing first for breakfast at Vanessa's restaurant to try to get the recovery process started.
Santa Maria is on the other side of Naousa from where I was yesterday, so I was basically taking the same route. The thing about driving a motorbike on that road, is that the wind is just unbelievable. I kept thinking I had flat tire, because the wind was moving me around so much. Kind of a stressful ride, especially when you add to it the fact that my bike has no pickup and can't handle hills, whereas the other two's bikes were about 20 years younger and have a lot of zip. But mine gets me there, so I'm not complaining.
We made it to the beach, and did some frolicking ourselves before settling down for some serious nappage / sunbathing, and generally had a good afternoon together before heading back to town to run some errands. We met up at Vanessa's to go to dinner at 21:00-ish, where Mikael said he saw a flyer for some place on the other side of Parikiea's harbor. So we ambled down to it, a very trendy spot called Blu that was set up with a great view of the harbor and town, and played sit-down chillout music. Don't know how you'd categorize it beyond that, but it mostly fit quite well.
We had a dinner there that was surprisingly reasonably priced, given the upscale look and feel of the place, and headed back to town to check out the club scene at about 0130. We wound up at a place that I think is called Dubliner, but it is actually basically a shopping mall of bars and clubs that you pay a E10 cover charge to get access to everything. We sat in the central garden for a while, and were assaulted by at least 5 different kinds of loud music with 5 different beats going on. It was really amazing, and not really in a good way. We settled on the Down Under bar (my second such bar in a week), and Mikael proceeded to buy us shot after shot - sambucca+baileys, absinthe, tequila, rum+coke (shot!), and probably other stuff. We were having a good time, needless to say. Vanessa and Ruth and some of Ruth's Irish friends showed up at 3 and we wound up in the Salsa bar until closing the place down at 0600. After which we got breakfast and headed home.
Where, at 0700, I discovered that somewhere along the line the key to my room fell out of my pocket. This was not good. I got back on my bike and went back to all the places we'd been and where I took out my camera, but with no joy, although Dubliner's was padlocked shut and I couldn't search there. With nothing left for it, I gave up at 0800 and went back to my room, where I dozed outside on the patio (on the flagstones) for half an hour before I heard my landlord's van start up. He didn't seem fazed or upset by my predicament, and even told me where I could copy the duplicate key he was giving me ("150 meters past the supermarket" - just for kicks, I checked my odometer and he was spot on, as he has been with most distances he's pronounced. It's like he went around with a measuring tape). So I gratefully poured myself into bed and blew off most of the day. This is what happens when you find friends on a trip like this - you have a great time, but the schedule gets a bit scrambled. I'm going to try to be good about that tonight. We'll see. I'm meeting up with Athos and D'Artagnan at 9 tonight...