Coming to you from Rhodes! Myself and 6 others from the Vass crew arrived here on Friday after spending the whole day travelling. But oh boy were we travelling in style. Stage 1: a minibus ride from our house in Vasiliki to Athens airport. Now I know what you’re thinking. A minibus? Not very business class. But there are minibuses… and then there are minibuses. This was the latter, if you know what I mean. Mercedes Benz. Leather seats. Functioning air conditioning.  (All pics are from final few days in Vasiliki) |
| A swift 6 hour drive later, we were at the airport. After breezing through security via the priority lane, we made our way through duty free (spritz of Hugo Boss on the way) and to the highly exclusive and very premium Sky Express private lounge. Ah yes we were doing this properly, like real business travellers. We arrived at the lounge. A suited and booted lady attended the desk just inside the door. Beyond, lone travellers were at their laptops sipping white wine; couples sat next to each other in arm chairs reading; colleagues perused documents over coffee and cake. We might have all looked like scrappy season workers, but we knew deep down that these were our people: business travellers. Successful. Put-together. Sleek. The desk lady checked our tickets and we made our way inside. |
  Time was short. Our flight was already boarding, but we were determined to use that lounge. We agreed that if we wanted to fit in, we had to play it cool and act like we’d lounged a thousand times. But that plan went out of the window when we saw…the buffet. There, in front of us, was a full array of lunchy things, a smattering of cakes and desserts, and, to top all that, a large fridge filled with beer and wine. And all of it was free! Madness. Our seven-strong group of slick business travellers descended into a frenzy. People were loading plates with cakes, sandwiches, and pastries. Beers were disappearing into bags, pockets and even a pillowcase. Other loungers were shoulder barged aside as the group lunged at the buffet again and again. Needless to say the one-way system went out of the window.   After stuffing our faces for five minutes, we left the lounge, leaving behind a decimated buffet, an empty beer fridge, and the vague scent of Boss Bottled Eau de Parfum. We rushed to our flight, for which the queue was still snaking around the departure lounge (a far inferior lounge to our lounge). Damnit, we could have stayed in our lounge for a few minutes longer. Not sure how pleased the rest of the Sky Express loungers would have been if we’d decided to stick around though. It was a very short flight to Rhodes, and upon arrival we were given a tour of the resort. It’s bloody huge, and all of it is shiny and new, with big lawns of perfect grass, loads of swimming pools and bars, a couple of restaurants, a spa, tennis courts etc etc. Room for hundreds of guests at a time. It really is like living in the wii sport resort game. But it’s a bit of a ghetto: the land surrounding is a mix of tiny farms, abandoned industrial buildings and empty hotels.   The team here are far closer to the seasonaire stereotype than the Vasiliki crowd. The louder ones seem to have the following as hobbies and interests:Getting wastedTalking about how wasted their going to get tonightReminiscing about how wasted they were last nightOn the first night, Matt and I got invited to go and check out the ‘Pigeon Palace’ with one of the bike guides and a couple of girls from the beach team, and since everyone had been talking all evening about how fun it is going to the pigeon palace we thought, why not? We climbed under a fence out of resort and went into this big old industrial building, which got its name from the pigeons that live there. With phone torches, Matt and I nosed around while elsewhere in the building, one of the beachies blasted some really bad electronic music from a speaker. We weren’t really sure what the point of this little outing was, or what was so fun about it. But then, from up some stairs, we heard them laughing and shouting and generally getting very excited. We went upstairs to find them literally just smashing shit up. Or, attempting to, at least. It was quite strange. They tried to kick a little metal cupboard door off its hinges, unsuccessfully. They picked up tiles and threw them against the wall. See, the problem was that they had clearly played this game a few times already, so the easy items – porcelain sink and toilet, wooden doors etc – had been smashed up long ago. Matt and I silently walked out and climbed a ladder to the roof. The others joined after a minute or two. We sat on the roof and looked out over the mega resort next to us. Our new home. After a few minutes of poor quality conversation we left them to it and went to bed. Welcome to Rhodes!   A funny story, but you know what it’s been pretty fun here (apart from that strange trip to the pigeon palace). Big team, lots of super nice people and FREE FOOD! Think the last month of this job will be good. The bike team are really nice and the work is easy. Dreamy! Let the mincing begin. Love James |
Welcome to Rhodes!
