Athenian Millionaires Flock Here in Summer…
“My friend, if you do not like it here, then I am taking a dead man across the sea.”
No worries, I can report. I like it here. The ferryman would, no doubt, be pleased.
“Here,” for the record, is the Greek island of Spetses, a seven-minute water-taxi ride across the Myrtoan Sea, just off the Peloponnesian Peninsula. I’ve come here on assignment for International Living (someone had to bite the bullet). Only about half-an-hour into my strolling around the place, I could see why the ferryman said you’d need to be dead not to love it.
It is, in a word, fantabulouso.
See for yourself…
This is where Athenian millionaires flock in the summer for sun, sea, and Aperol spritzes. I’ve been walking around the little village for the better part of six hours, stopping here and there to partake of cooling libations and to thumb out this dispatch on my iPhone.
I’m not going to say much about Spetses; I’m saving all the good stuff for a cover story I’m writing for International Living magazine about driving the Peloponnese.
The real purpose of today’s dispatch is to share the story of a couple I came across who are living their best life…
At one of the seaside providers of libations, I struck up a conversation with an Iowa couple. They looked to be in the late-60s, but that’s just a guess.
The woman called over the waiter to announce, “I am dining with a monster!” She held up a small, empty bowl. “He ate all the sauce. Can we have a bit more—and more bread, too.”
She noticed me snickering, and all three of us got to talking…
They’ve been on the road since last November. Basically following the sun: the Philippines in November and December; January in Bali; February and March in southern Turkey; and the last six or seven weeks bopping around Greece. Next destination: Unknown at the moment, though he thinks Sicily would be nice.
“Honestly,” she told me, “we hit the point where we were just tired of the same ol’, same ol’ at home. We’re young at heart, but not in body, and we were talking and decided if we’re going to do this, be citizens of the world thing, it’s now or never. So here we are.”
They put their house up for rent through a property management company, stuffed their possessions into a storage facility, and have all their mail going to a lifelong friend’s house.
The husband tells me their costs on the road are actually a bit less than their lifestyle back in Iowa. They’re finding places to stay for weeks at a time on Airbnb and Booking.com, and they’re supplementing their Social Security with assignments on freelance website Fiverr. She’s a graphic artist, “and I just watch her and supervise,” the husband announces. She shakes her head.
They came to Spetses on a high-speed ferry from Athens, “because it seemed like a great place to do nothing all day. And that’s mainly what we do,” she told me. “He walks around and flirts with all the Greek waitresses.”
He shrugs.
“Friends back home aren’t sure what to make of us, but this is the life we want. And it’s the best life we’ve lived yet.”
I get that.
Though I’m not as nomadic as these two (a child in school imposes certain limits) I do love living and working from abroad, and hopping around the world to write from various locations. So far this year that includes southern Portugal, Dubai, Montenegro, and now Greece.
Soon you’ll be hearing from me from the Thai island of Koh Samui and somewhere along the Vietnamese coast—where my wife and I are spending all of July and August.
So that’s my libation-fueled message to you today: We’re all young at heart, but we’re increasingly not so young of body. Use this moment to go live your best life flitting about the world.
I can’t begin to tell you the contentment I’ve found in the most random places, like this little seaside café in Spetses, watching water-taxis arrive and depart, knowing I’m getting paid just to sit here, thumbing a story on my phone, listening to Dean Martin (“Ain’t That a Kick In the Head”), and silently being grateful for these opportunities to experience the cultures of the world.
Now, you’ll have to excuse me. Sunset is near and my Aperol spritz has arrived.
I’m gonna sit right here and record it on the highlight reel of my life…
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