The Pool (or: how my bathing suit caused me to become guilty of a crime)

We stayed at the Holidays in Evia Eritrea Village Resort.  (There are pictures on their website.)  It was nice.  There were cabins and bungalows and hotel rooms.  It was an all-inclusive resort, so all the meals, cleaning, activities were all included, which reminded me of being back on the Big White Boat.  I like all-inclusive.  It's relaxing to not have to make decisions.

There was a huge fresh water pool, a smaller salt water pool, and a beach.  I was enamored with the salt water pool.  I went every single day.  Most days, I was able to go in the afternoon.  (I'm not too new with our company to attend the newcomer sessions, and I'm not a supervisor of anything either, so I didn't have to go any of those sessions either.)  When I wasn't able to go in the afternoon, I'd go straight after our afternoon sessions, before dinner, since the pool closed at 8pm.

Who closes a pool at 8pm?

I'd forgotten how much I love swimming, diving, and just being in the water.  The salt water pool rocked because you could just float without any effort at all.  Several meetings were even held in the pool.  I mean...if you have to have a business meeting, might as well be in a pool, right?

We weren't the only ones at the resort.  There were a bunch of French people, which sort of surprised me for a moment.  Then I remembered that in August, in France, you won't hear French, but Italian and Japanese.  All the French leave.  And now I know where they go: Greece.  There were also Russians, and I think maybe they were having a Russian kids camp.  Anyway...

One day, I went to grab my bathing suit off my balcony railing, where it'd been drying, only to discover to my dismay that it had blown off into the tree below.

And the tree below was a privately owned apartment, separate from the resort.  Eek.

I wandered out to the courtyard to stare at the tree and figure out how to get my bathing suit out of it.  (I'd already tried knocking on the apartment door...no answer.)  As I was staring at the tree, this man wandered up and spoke to me in French.  (I suppose I must have looked French that he just assumed I would speak his language?)

"Well...I found my suitcase but I've lost my daughter."

I looked at him for a moment, and then responded, "Well...my bathing suit fell off my balcony into that tree there."

He joined me in looking at my dilemma.  Then we became international partners in crime.

We climbed over a private wall into someone's ground floor balcony area.  Breaking and entering without the breaking, I suppose.  There was a second wall to climb, and I was wearing a dress.  He looked at that, and then completely shocked me.

He climbed over the second wall for me and got my bathing suit out of the tree.  Gentlemen do still exist.  While he was doing that, a girl I could only suppose to be his daughter wandered up and stared at us with a "what in the world is going on" look on her face.

He came back and said, "I got your bathing suit!"

I quipped, "And I think I found your daughter!"

I'm sure she was so confused as to why an English-accented French-speaking woman was climbing over walls into people's private yards with her father, when they'd only just arrived at the resort a few minutes earlier.  I ran off with my bathing suit to the pool before I could find out if she was the daughter...or the owner of the apartment I'd just broken into their yard.

Lessons learned: Don't put your bathing suit on the balcony railing to dry but on the chairs on the balcony...and take two bathing suits next time.