"Oh God." I replied. Nevertheless, the sun was out, and it was 10:55 - time for breakfast. Realising that we couldn't be arsed to put clothes on and get up, we just lazed for an hour, and eventually hauled ourselves out of bed and wandered to the TJs' room. It wasn't a pretty sight. Broken glass blocked the entrance for those with bare feet, and lying bed were three objects barely recognisable as humans.
"Morning boys! How are you feeling?" I asked,
"ratamatatungijoop..." was the response.
"I'm sorry? I didn't quite catch that" Ted retorted
"Leave us alone, can't you see we're dying?" came from Zack's general direction. We told them that we were going to the beach, and that we'd see them there later if the alcohol ever left their systems.
The sun was out, and it must have been about 25 degrees. This was what I had longed for in places like Paris and Amsterdam. Making our way down to the beach brought back faint memories of last night's attempts to find the sea. After about 5 minutes of walking, we found ourselves a place in which to sprawl amongst the other Pink Palace guests who had braved the early hours, and slowly fell asleep in the sun's gentle rays. Instant tan! Hooray! After about 1 hour I had already made myself browner, and decided it was time for a swim.
Ted and I rose to our feet and inspected the water. To our suprise, we discovered it to be crystal-clear, warm(ish) and sparsely inhabited by small unthreatening fish. Ted dived straight in, whilst I (being the gentle and sensitive soul that I am) took about 10 minutes to accustom myself to water that was quite unlike the sort I was used to back home (i.e. brown, smelly and poo-riddled, ah the true essence of the UK!).
The TJs stumbled down to join us at around 2PM, looking like they'd had a heavy night out with Dean Martin, and proceeded to collapse onto the sand, moaning quietly. Still, we hadn't eaten yet, and the hunger was getting to me. We all bought gyros from the food stall behind us, and guzzled down our first meal of the day. For a while, we continued to familiarise ourselves with each other, hearing tales of how Canada is more influential than the USA, and telling tales of how England were going to win the world cup.
All this talk of football made us a bit hyper, so I purchased a small, crap football for a small, crap handful of Euros. All of a sudden, all hell broke loose, and at least 12 of us had started a keep-up circle, which later evolved into a Europe vs the Rest of the World game (basically England and Sweden vs Canada, NZ, and a few celebrities who decided to join us). It was fantastic. Eventually the game was brought to a halt when Nils (getting a bit over-excited) ripped his swimming shorts and decided he couldn't continue to play, free and easy. It had been a fun afternoon, and we had met a few more legendary souls. The biggest of these legends was Mikey (whom we had first met on the boat the day before), who was another Canadian, and therefore joined us in our hatred of most Americans, and said the word 'about' in a funny way. Ah, only joking! All of you Canadians have mastered the word 'about' and added your own style.
We washed and changed and already found that it was suppertime once more. We chatted with people, instantly forgot their names and spent the remainder of the meal just nodding and agreeing with everything they had to say. Again the food was excellent and we prepared for another evening of drinking and general hedonism.
Ted: "No chance old-timer!"
"Hi baby. I'm English. Let's dance" and "You're beautiful, like a woman!" He then pulled out the big guns such as "Me love you, long time" and "If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?" and from this moment on they were to be seen on the dance floor avoiding Dani's now out of control antics. In fact, he was so gone, that the majority of guests just stood and watched him, assuming him to be some sort official evening entertainment - "Dani 'the clown Prince' Lipkin". Ted and his new "friend" Tanya then mysteriously "disappeared"......
Pretty gone myself, I was pretty boring (going to bed at only 1:30). Eventually, Ted burst into the room at about 3, with a big grin on his face and a look that said 'guess where I've been'. Not wanting to know, and preferring to concentrate on trying to fix my poisoned liver, I closed my eyes and went back to my dream about the Swedish Women's volleyball team, all naked and oiled and willing, and......okay, i'll stop now.
