Sunshades and Souvlaki in Athens

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We have a pretty decent amount of shade on Dreams but with the temperature barely dipping below 32 degrees, any sun that did shine on the cockpit, where we spend most of our time, was brutal.

We made do by hanging towels with clothes pegs but very quickly realized we needed a long term solution.

Mike went into research mode and soon had several quotes for custom shades which ran from reasonable to extortionate. 

Fortunately AeroNautica, the company that offered a reasonable quote, also got excellent reviews, so the next job was to try and find a slip at a marina in Athens to get measured up.

Finding a slip for a catamaran in a major city in the middle of summer that won’t  break the bank is nigh on impossible, but Mike likes a challenge. 

After lots of back and forth we were able to secure two nights at Alimos Marina with very strict instructions that it was not extendable.

All went well. The marina, despite some negative reviews was great with friendly and helpful staff.  Particularly the marineros who made this our easiest docking to date. 

We celebrated our stress free docking with dinner at a local Greek restaurant, bizarrely called O Paris.  The souvlaki was delicious and the pitta was the best I’ve had. Fresh and perfectly grilled, it tasted almost like Indian Naan bread. 

This family run restaurant didn’t have a fair division of labor. While the women ran around taking orders and serving food the guy charmed customers, played DJ and poured away the profits by giving shots of ouzo to all the customers.  We had a great night. 

The next morning the guys from AeroNautica turned up on time and were extremely professional.  We were surprised that they didn’t just take measurements, they also cut stencils for the shades and installed some of the hardware too. 

Now we just needed to stay close enough to Athens to be able to return quickly once the shades were ready, which we were told would be one month.  But this is Greece, so we didn’t expect them to be ready before the end of the season. 

We were wrong. 29 days later we got the call that they were ready!

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