The sound of invisible crickets fills the air. It’s our first morning in Greece, 35 degrees, and we are set to board our mystery voyage around the Aegean. My 67-year-old dad and I are in an Athens nail salon I selected from Google for its name: Alexandra Nails. He insists on staying in the salon and watching the process, suggesting I go with “a flesh tone to match all your outfits.”
A holiday together seemed like it could be just the tonic for my recently divorced father and his only child. Though we’d traveled together with various arms of our family over the years, it had been 30 years since we’d gone just he and I—and it felt like the right time to reflect on the past year’s turmoil, after my father’s chronic health problems escalated to a major surgery and he overcame the challenges of a marriage ending in his mid-60s. He’d survived the sickness, survived the heartbreak, and now, there was a lot more free time on his calendar.
As we prepared to set off on our voyage, I thought back to our first overseas adventure. I was five, and he rented us a room in the beachside home of an old Spanish couple. I remembered the deafening sound of crickets and my dad rejoicing in all these new sensations, telling me they were each six feet tall hiding behind the trees. He guided my first swim in the sea, diving down below the waters when I dropped my glittery jelly shoes, fed me salty foods and sickly sweet churros with chocolate sauce, brushed my salty hair and paid to get a colorful braid, and carefully bundled a feverish miniature me onto the plane home when I started showing the first signs of chickenpox. It was a perfect first holiday.
This time around, to try and recapture that magic, we settled on Greece—whose waters I was pining after, and whose islands I’ve heard my dad wax lyrical on over the years, though we’d never been together. The boat we’re boarding for one week, sailed by Variety, is beautiful: with just 36 cabins, it’s a 69-meter vessel designed in muted palettes and features only one restaurant and one bar (not a ghastly casino or fetid hot tub in sight). The mega yacht’s exterior in white, chrome, and glass, and a private top sun deck, is understated but still feels a little like something out of music video. On deck, the cava is flowing and guests are acclimatizing to the heat and waves. I spot an ultra-glamorous Greek family moving around the ship: rich natural tans, lithe limbs, jet black hair, regal noses, heavy kohl eyes, gold dripping, precious stones glinting. There’s a baby on board, and I learn her name is Odyssea: four months old with a thick mop of shiny raven hair, her eyes are the same color as the Aegean. It turns out she’s also the granddaughter of the ship’s founder.
Photo: Alexandra Pereira
Photo: Alexandra Pereira
The voyage we’re on is a family affair, in many senses. The fleet of ships was launched in 1949 by Diogenes Venetopoulos, a historian who looked to the future in the aftermath of the war that had ravaged some of Greece’s most treasured sites, and his descendants are on board this week—from his jovial CEO son Filippos with his new wife (a lawyer and ceramicist) and their extended families; the ones I’d been captivated by when boarding. Never had my dad and I imagined adventuring up close and personal with a Greek yachting dynasty. Odyssea’s parents, who I get close to yapping about cinema over the week, are Filippos’s brother (a passionate, bespectacled documentary filmmaker who runs the company’s green and queer initiatives) and his partner Nikos who works with the Onassis Foundation when not dancing me dizzy at the deck parties.
Photo: Courtesy of Variety Cruises
Photo: Courtesy of Variety Cruises
These days, I don’t really think of my dad as an extrovert. But as I watch him talk to our fellow guests, I’m reminded that he does have some stories: he’s worked as a bookbinder, mechanic, tattooist, reptile shop owner, and now gig promoter. Everyone is asked to introduce themselves at the inaugural captain’s dinner. My dad is the last to receive the microphone, and I can tell he’s nervous. “My name’s Gordon,” he says. I love reptiles, beer, and tattoos.” I remember that I used to be the shy one out of my and my dad. Now the roles have reversed.
