Gear Up! Concert Tonight!

Friday finds us trying to wrap our minds around the fact that this week is almost over.  However, there is not winding down....only gearing up!  Tonight we have our Festival Concert in Poros Town...but before that...a music lesson with energetic Francesco, kayakying with energetic guide Brian, a tour and picnic at Katerina's family oilive farm (she's full of energy too)...and then, the evening concert in town!  Oh, and be sure to be packed up as the bus for Athens leaves at o'dark thrity tomorrow morning...and buses that go on ferries wait for NO ONE.  Right.

A great lesson this morning gets us each playing a little improvised tune to the back music of everyone else lightly strumming.  Who knew!?

You go girl: Maureen!

A quick lunch and a moment to jam things into our cases for homeward travel.  Then it's off in the kayaks.

It's windy as we paddle down to the canal, under the bridge and then suddenly out into a calm water.  We're headed for a swimming beach and the water is wonderfully warm!

On the way home, Brian has hooked up a tow to Freda to insure we get back in time for the boat to the olive farm, which is right before the boat to the concert in town, which... we are giving!

Nan and Patty put some muscle into it on the way back.  We are surprised to find some little standing waves here and there!  Push on!

It' so easy to stand in the water here as there is NO shivering possible.  It's just so WARM!  We wouldn't mind swimming again...but...the show must go on.

The water taxis await us, our ukes and our picnic boxes of food.  We have a nice ride over to the olive farm where we get a tour, a little view of sunset on the sea and then a great picnic.  Steve and Maureen treat us to the songs they wrote this week with a private preformance!

Katerina tells us about the different types of olives they grow on the family farm.  They also grow lemons and figs....which we are invited to taste, right off the trees!

 Francesco, Mike Hind, Lynette and Michael Adcock on the shore for a sunset photo op!

Steve and Nan too.

Then it's another boat ride, back over to the Poros town side of the shore, where we find the concert venue all set up in the town square.  Gulp.  Steve and Nan have signed up to preform...together...in front of ....well...in front of people!  More people than our little ukulele group, and we rarely do anything solo with them!  What were we thinking?

"Nan and Steve...LIVE...at the Ukulele Festival on Poros!"

It was a great experience.  For one, we got to go second and that made the rest of the concert really fun!  (bring on some ouzo!)  For two, we actually did an instrumental song together and didn't recognize mistakes!  (I'm sure there were some...but we just kept going and with a strong beginning and strong ending...no one remembers the mistakes in-between.  That's our story and we're sticking to it!)  For three, we had FUN!

The evening ended with yet another water taxi ride back to the Odyssey Suites....and this time the boat driver had Greek music with the volume UP....as in LOUD, LOUD, LOUD!

If you can't beat it....join it!

Oh Yeah...it is quite a ride back!  And now to figure out how to be up and at 'em at 05:15 in the morning.  Oh wait...that's only five hours from now.....