Epilogue

Finally, a selection of the rest of the photos from Crete are up on Flickr. That makes 251 photos up and available out of a total of 1,347 photos (3.11 GB). 18.6% is pretty bad but I do hope to someday show many of you the rest of them. If you’d like to get a DVD of them please let me know and I will see what I can do!

Aaand so. Do you want to hear about the epilogue? I kind of had one sketched out. (Of course you do.)

Actually, there’s not much more to say about the trip itself that hasn’t already been said. Sevilla was by far our favorite of Spain, Grenoble was beyond amazing, Venice won for improbability and Osteria Bea Vita far outshone the rest of the restaurants on our trip, and returning to Crete cemented its nomination as one of my favorite places. There have been so many great moments…the Tour de France, windy death-roads on the way to the mountaintop restaurant, watching candles being made, Agriculture August, lots of sunsets, and of course things like bad hotels and getting lost. We did a pretty good job doing a pretty crazy thing!

For the curious (and for posterity) I made a handy map of where we were, and although some of the routes are not exactly the ones we took, it’s close enough without getting too hardcore about it. Voila!

I guess the thing I was most struck by right when I got back was how jealous I was of the women in France and the municipalities of Crete, who would scoff at my fascination with the “emerging trends” of slow, local, and organic food because they’ve already been doing that their whole lives. It does not get any more direct than buying your eggs from the farmer or making your own olive oil. They have no transport emissions associated with their food, which is almost unimaginable for many in the States (those who have gardens and such notwithstanding). Suffice to say that I’m impressed and I will be trying to measure up to even a fraction of that. Omnivore’s Dilemma touts eatwild.com as a database for local pasture farms and once we settle in I think Peter and I will put in for a CSA (community supported agriculture) box. While investing in this style of farming seems selfish (given that prices are too high for much of the population) and less thrifty (a tomato is a tomato, right? Why pay more?) the agricultural practices seem to be generally better and hopefully if demand goes up then the cost of production will go down. Anyway, I’m not much of an expert on this facet of environmentalism but it seems like the right thing to do. We seem to be across from a very helpful grocery store to that end, in that lots of things are already organic without me having to pick them out as special. We’ll see how it goes!

Otherwise the move to Pittsburgh has gone reasonably well. An insane week of packing, last minute visiting and even later-minute appointments (haircut, chiropractor, massage, thank goodness) has passed even quicker than I had thought. It’s crazy to think we won’t be back in Delaware for so long – that I can’t just hop in the car and be on Main Street in a few minutes. But after four days here we are mostly unpacked and settled, although the rhythm of life is certainly different than in Europe. Significantly less walking, for one thing. I find it has been harder to get used to this new place, even after so many other days of new places…probably because I know I’ll be here a while. In any case I think we will be okay, we just have to figure out the bus schedules and payroll and all the minutia of life that didn’t really come up while we were abroad. Woo hoo.

Well I guess that’s it for this blog! Adios, au revoir, ciao, and yassu… hope you enjoyed the read!

Finally home

Well, welcome to the unplanned 37th day of our trip…and to start off, more observations about the hotel (Tryp Diana for those of you keeping tabs)! The most obvious one was the shower, which has a pretty cool setup but also an enormous amount of water pressure. After all the weak showers we’ve had I almost fell over. Unfortunately it was so hard that it turned into a mist when it hit, so the entire bathroom ended up a bit soggy. Nothing really new after curtainless Greece but still, 4 stars?! Also we were interrupted by housekeeping at 8:40 and 9AM, who didn’t knock and almost walked in on me in my underwear the first time. I guess our fault for not leaving the ‘do not disturb’ sign out? We haven’t done that all trip…plus I figured we were in Spain, no one is up that early. Oh well. Perhaps the important lesson is that four-stars aren’t really much better than three-stars. Also that non-cheese, non-meat food in Spain is as depressing as ever, given that the yogurt and apples we bought yesterday were probably the worst I’ve had in a long time. Sigh.

Once they dropped us off at the airport (free shuttle ain’t bad at least) it wasn’t important though. We got there supremely early, by almost three hours, and checked in and bided our time comfortably. We even had time to look around the shops! Not much to actually consider though, as it seems that the only reasonable thing in Duty Free is alcohol. Everything else is horrendous. But we did manage to get free samples of dark chocolate and some sort of peanut thing, plus fountain water, so I suppose we took the shops for all they were worth without buying anything. We only had 3.86E left at that point, after scrounging up an extra 3.50E from our bags and finding a cent on the ground. Since I was hungry and euros would be useless after Madrid, it became my job to finish them off. After considerable scouting, I found a little Spanish omelet sandwich for 3.05 (believe me, no easy task) and convinced the Starbucks lady to give me an 85 cent mini chocolate muffin for my remaining 81 cents. Bwuahaha!

A little while later we boarded the plane (exactly on time to the minute! After Olympic I’m shocked) and took off! Woo hoo! We even got lunch on the plane…a little sandwich and a kit kat at least, plus a mysterious little tube of milk (mmm, tastes like Europe milk…oh wait, not really a good thing). Made my previous search a little silly but it was still fun. Time passed uneventfully throughout the flight and soon enough we were through to Heathrow, looking at fancy gadget shops, waiting a bit, and then on our flight home! Finally. Unfortunately we had been placed square in the baby screaming zone, as there were twin infants plus assorted other children in our section that took turns being incredibly upset. For the entire seven hours. Glblugh. Peter and I tried to escape by watching movies, but their entertainment system was down so we only got a small fraction of what we were supposed to have access to. We ended up watching The Soloist (eh, it was ok I guess?) and then I watched some random Indian movie while Peter continued to plow through sudoku. Mostly we just stayed up going “grr babies” but after more than enough of that we arrived back on American soil. And our checked bag made it, and we weren’t stopped on the way out. What a relief.

So kudos to the Adelmans for picking up the groggy travelers and feeding them nice American leftovers for dinner! Yay hamburgers and sweet corn (and MILK!). Peter and I split the gifts (found some things we had forgotten about) before they drove me back home. Ahh home, with tons of moving stuff piled up and lots waiting to be in boxes…switching from ‘europe ahh’ to ‘packing ackkk’ is not a thing I look forward to. I’d like to just relax for the next week but that would be impossible. Sadness. But doling out presents was (and will be) fun, as was going to sleep in my own comfy comfy bed. And waking up and getting eggs in a basket (and MILK! Yeah that’s not old yet). And taking a shower will be excellent when it is available. And not spending any more freaking euros…

For a second when I laid down last night it felt like I had never left, because nothing had moved. But 37 days is a long time and there’s a pretty good hole in my wallet now, not to mention the almost-4 gigs of pictures I’ve taken (more selections will be up soon). This was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime trip, not just because it was so notable but also because I don’t think we would survive doing it like this again. There was too much stress about the plane situation coming and going, for one thing. Stress on our bodies would be another point. Hopefully next time we can organize whatever we do much better given all this experience…or just hire a travel agent. Whuf. But I think we did pretty well despite all our planning mistakes. Hooray.

I will probably update once more when I get around to posting the pictures…otherwise thanks for reading!

Stuck

Well, we knew today might be tough, and it sure ended up unpleasant in the morning. We got up around 5am – blegh, already – and our bus was a little late, and then our flight to Athens was delayed. Fortunately, our flight from Athens to Madrid was also delayed, so we didn’t miss it…buuuuut it was an hour late, which means it landed just about as the plane connecting Madrid to Heathrow took off. Wonderful, Olympic Airlines. Every single flight we’ve had with them has been late. As Peter says, it’s a very Greek airline – they tell us not to worry about late flights, because all the rest of their flights are also delayed, and at least they have nice food right? I mean the lunch was really good for an airline – meats, cheeses, lettuce and a chicken salad thing for sandwich plus delicious croissants, fruit, Happy Cow cheese and some other things. We ate it all with suspicions that we would have to stay overnight in Madrid, in a country with not so stellar food. Of course it was early enough that this could not end up being the case, but that’s the stress we were feeling. At least we’d napped and been fed a little.

Ultimately, though, dread and stress were the right things to feel. We couldn’t get anyone in Athens to help us, despite entering security to talk to people at our gate, exiting security to talk to non-existent BA people (probably on a goddamn coffee break for the 45 min that we needed them), and re-entering security before the flight departed. I suspect it was because if we stayed on their home turf, Olympic would have to own up to their fault. Instead they shuttled us to Madrid where we were then thrown between Iberia (a subsidiary of BA) and BA and Iberia again, without any useful results. The Olympic office was also closed at Madrid – oh good. If we had a dime for every wrong thing or goosechase we’ve been on for these flights, we’d be pretty rich. When we checked last week when we first landed in Iraklion they said that they would be able to check our checked luggage through no problem, so we wouldn’t have to worry about picking it up in Madrid. When we checked today they said that was impossible. So not only did we not have time to make the flight, we had to wait at baggage as well. We should have just run to the terminal for last call and said bugger to the checked bag, all things considered. But we didn’t so…now we’re in a pickle.

So without anyone to help us – not Iberia, not a local BA rep, not Olympic, not even Lufthansa or US Air or Continental – we activated a pretty intense phone tree. This is the first time we’ve needed to use our phones abroad and I suppose it was worth it, although it will probably be very expensive come bill day. Anyhow, finally we got through to a BA rep over the phone and she took our info and upgraded to a flight out tomorrow. BA457 from MAD to LHR and BA069 from LHR to PHL, for a paltry 374 USD (!) each. Considering that a new ticket costs somewhere around 1000E, that’s a pretty good deal. Not as good as actually making our flight tonight but I guess not bad (aka the magic of the airlines – screwing you less than you thought seems like a fantastic deal!). Also the travel agency booth we were near was able to book us a hotel for only 58E/ night…woo! Free shuttle service and it’s a 4-star hotel – probably the first we’ve stayed at this summer! I guess they have some kind of lastminute deal with the hotels in the area so the prices are lower…awesome. Big, has AC and a terrace (although no free internet, which seems to be pretty standard for 4-star hotel, poo on them).

So at this point we had planned not to have any Euro left, so we had about 13.70E out. Didn’t really make sense to take any more out – especially since this was an $800 day already – so we set about trying to make do on it. The problem was that the hotel is in a pretty suburban area, as the airport isn’t exactly in the center of town, so there’s not much around. The guy at the front desk told us we could take a taxi to a supermarket... yeah we weren’t going to do that and add a 5E+ surcharge to our yogurt purchases. We haven’t taken a taxi yet, why start now! So we started to walk around and lo and behold, we found a little supermarket right around the block. What a dumbass (when asked later, he said “well that one isn’t very super.” Oh thanks…). Time for supermarket dinner #2! This time we got nice meats, cheeses, crackers, 1.75E wine, yogurt/apples for breakfast tomorrow, cookies and some magnum ice cream for about 11E. HaHA! That means we had about 2E left for the internet when we came back even. It ended up being a pretty fantastic dinner and we both got legitimately full and wine-happy (it tasted like cheap wine but hey, it was, and at least it was a rioja). Which meant we passed out for about 7 hours before we got online to make sure our plane reservations had changed…but that’s ok. We confirmed the change so we should be making it tomorrow (fingers crossed). Here’s to hoping. Gonna get a few more hours of sleep now.

Addendum – that’s what I was *going* to post, but the guy at the front desk decided to be a jerk and tell me it was impossible to use my own USB at the computer (the port was in plain sight in the front but admin protected for some reason). I tried to post a smaller version but their computers didn’t support Blogger sites. I don’t really understand the paranoia considering they were only running Internet Explorer and presumably have the resources to fund tech support considering their per-hour charges are horrendous. On top of that, on the way back to our room we saw a little lizard skitter up the walls. Four star hotel fail! At least the room is clean, I guess.

Last day in Crete

Not much going on this morning – just packing, eating leftover baklava, and attempting to reheat our leftovers in the bright sun. That last one only worked ok for one of the dishes from last night…the other one tasted terrible lukewarm so we didn’t eat it. Oh well. Then we headed to the bus station and arrived in Heraklion a few hours later. Thankfully, our hotel this time is much better, with excellent AC and a nice bathroom (although again, no shower curtain). I’m a bit mad at myself that I didn’t book this one before, but can’t do anything about it now. I guess I just know which to avoid for next time.

After we were done marveling at our luck in rooms we headed back to the Four Lions Square to do a very important thing – eat more gyros. These are definitely the best we’ve tried in Crete! And then we bought more pastries for tomorrow morning, and a European coke to test against American coke when we get home (we suspect the one here has real sugar). Mmm food. After a bit of waiting we were picked up by Kostas to go for coffee (ie 2-hr chat), and he also picked up another greek girl who was very nice. Again they told us the place we were going was very near but it ended up being about 20 minutes away. No matter, it was riiiight on the water – any closer and you would be wet. Pretty cool! It seems that they don’t really care if the drinks are overpriced or touristy as long as it has a nice view. Kind of interesting. But more than that it was time for some good conversation, about politics and Crete life and a lot of things. The unfortunate part is that Kostas has to stay on the army base tonight so he can’t drive us to the airport tomorrow morning…foo. So I guess we are braving the busses once more. I hope it works. In lieu of that, the afternoon ‘coffee’ (Peter got a milkshake and I got a chocolate drink haha) was really scenic and very nice. I really do hope I get to come back again sometime when Kostas is not in the army. I do want to see Santorini someday, and maybe some other islands, so perhaps making a stop in Crete will be possible. As they say, Crete is the best island as far as they are convinced! Not only is it the only island that brews raki, which is of dubious importance to me, but they also are the only ones (they say) that bring dessert and raki with the check as a gesture of hospitality. It’s definitely won a permanent place of honor with me and hopefully I can convince Peter to come back as well. =)

After that we weren’t very hungry but tried to follow some of Kostas’ recommendations all the same. I was enticed by the idea of a nice last meal but when I told the waiter that we weren’t going to be ordering very much, he told us that would be a problem. So we left. He had plenty of open tables, so I guess he was just being a jerk for his own sake. Kind of a put off, but we went to Ismir Kebap again and got delicious cheap pitas anyway so it wasn’t really our loss. Not exactly the ideal notion of a last night on vacation but it works!

Now we have printed out some of our boarding passes (but not all, grrrr BA) and will be waking up all too soon to do the final final packing and ship out. I’m not too excited about our three-connection day of travel but at least we don’t have to navigate any (outer-airport) metro systems. Hopefully all goes well…by the next update we should be in the states again!

Beach day!

What a nice day this ended up being! Not quite as much for Peter, who has a sore stomach, which is suspected to be something like a hernia – bad bad. So after our yogurt and baklava breakfast – nom – he went back to bed and I got the opportunity to walk around by myself since I was too awake. My initial goal was just to look at the west beach (as opposed to the east beach, which we saw yesterday) and then shop, but I ended up walking all over the old town. I went up a fortress remnant and saw the back of the old Kasteli quarter, but it wasn’t super impressive. I was sort of on a hunt for souvenirs for myself, clothes or otherwise, and when I didn’t find anything other than tourist shops and pretty streets I returned back to buy some ceramics at the shop across the street from our hotel. Now our apartment has a pretty pretty pitcher and a cool candle thing…in addition to the napkin holder I bought yesterday from the same place. Too many cool things! And they weren’t very expensive at all either, which was very nice.

By the time I got back it was super hot out, but I woke Peter up and we made use of our terrace by making ourselves drinks and lying out. Well, I laid out, and Peter sat in the shade and did sudoku. Considering that this is probably the last (and only) day to work on a tan that doesn’t just include my arms, I think I did pretty well. After cooling off in the room (<3 AC) we went out for a nice lunch at Tamam, a recommended place. I got apaki again (the smoked pork) and Peter got baby goat with roasted potatoes…both ended up being excellent – the goat fell apart when we poked it – and we again got more raki. By the end of it we were both pretty tipsy, which was a bit embarrassing considering that it was lunch but not so bad because it was our second-to-last day. The meal was delicious anyway!

Then it was beach time! Earlier today I saw signs for sun chair rentals at the western beach so we decided to go there, to minimize the sand exposure probability for Peter. Also we don’t have any full-sized towels, so that would have been irritating. Instead we used some of the spare hand towels from the hotel – sufficiently large enough for wiping off / protecting butt and back at least – and picked a pair of seats around 4pm. There was supposedly a 5E charge, but we stayed until sunset (~8pm) and no one ever asked us for anything. Free things hooray! Also the water was excellent, really clear and warm. There were even little fishies in, although some of those would try to nibble on you if you stayed too still in the water. Pretty relaxing for sure though! Even the usual beach noise was pretty entertaining – there was one lady that would shout “donuuuuuuuuuuuts!” every so often as she walked along the beach, and it was in such a tone that we cracked up each time. Sunset was very pretty too, although there were again no clouds to make it a bit more interesting. Oh well, I’ll take clear skies over rainy ones! Hooray for our first and only real beach day…

After four hours plus in the sun it felt pretty good to shower. It was certainly time to eat dinner by the time we were done, so we went to To Xani with high hopes. Unfortunately we ordered too much food for our sun-shrunken stomachs, so for the first time this trip we ended up with take-away boxes. Considering how many places we’ve eaten out, I think over-ordering once is pretty good. Thankfully our hotel room has a fridge, and I think the kitchen has a microwave or toaster oven, so we have lunch for tomorrow! Pastistsio and a zucchini-potato-mint thing is what we have now, and they were both pretty ok. We were too full from the salad and the staka, which is a local cheese served warm (think fondue with olive oil, very good), to properly appreciate them though. Maybe tomorrow. For now we are too sleepy! More silly TV and drinks for us until we decide to fall asleep.

Today we were thinking that 36 days was probably the maximum amount of time that we could have lasted on this trip. We are pretty art’d- and museum’d-out, our feet have sub-callus blisters on the heels (which is very upsetting), our backs hurt from the crappy hotel beds/pillows, and it’s simply time to go home where there are clean bathrooms and sheets you can trust and drawers instead of backpacks for all your stuff. It might be less exciting but will definitely be easier on us. Especially since the spare suitcase is now jam-packed with stuff and is hella heavy (thanks Kostas for the 4.5 L of liquid). Plus the Greeks seem to have something against shower curtains, as this place doesn’t have one either. Water pressure isn’t great either. Grr. I’m ready for home, and just in time! Hahaha.

GRR I JUST KILLED A COCKROACH GRR GRR HOTEL EL GRECO! At least it is asploded now. And they gave us the nicest room (terrace-wise, anyway) so far as we can tell. But grr anyway. Maybe I go clean up now. Hopefully we will be able to update tomorrow night – it’s theoretically possible – but we have to wake up super early for the flight so we will see. I’m sure there will be follow-up posts either way. PS we really appreciate the comments so if you are so moved please post one! Kbye!

PPS - some pictures are up!

Harbour night!

All right, one of our last pack-up days! Made it over to the baklava guy in time to see him in action. Pretty cool, although I was hoping he would start up the machine he uses to make the little furry baklava (the stringy ones) and he didn’t. Oh well! We did manage to get some loukoumades from a recommended shop, and this time we got chocolate syrup…at this particular place (Kanakakis, I think) they cook the little balls and then pump each one individually with some chocolate sauce. Very good! I wanted to try the honey versions as well but we were too full. All that was left was to go to Chania! We learned that we could catch a bus to the bus station, which was infinitely easier than dragging all of our crap across the city again. We had to wait quite a while for the right bus to come, though, which was a bit frustrating. But we got there and got to the right bus and all was well. I took a good nap on the way over, and the hotel wasn’t too bad to find. Chania is probably more touristy than the rest of the cities we’ve been to – or at least so thinks Peter – but it is still nice I think. Our room has a really nice terrace that’s almost as big as the inside, which is cool, and we’re very near a bunch of good restaurants I looked up.

Once Peter finished his Sudoku puzzle (an excuse to soak up some AC I think) we were ready to walk the city. We passed a lot of handcraft shops that were really interesting – the position of our hotel is excellent for that, which I’m happy about. Then we walked the harbor and noticed that a lot of things were shutting down, including the famous mosque and the huge bazaar that seems to be behind it…oops, it’s a Monday, in the afternoon all the shops go to sleep. Oh well, we’ll hit them tomorrow perhaps. We continued to see a bunch of side streets and some things that had stayed open, tried some Chania gyros that were disappointing (probably got them too close to the harbor) and continued to the old city walls and towards one of the beaches. It’s tiny but cute! Then we found a supermarket because Peter wanted some rum and cokes to drink on our terrace, and headed back to do so. Like a lot of Crete, the harbor is pretty awfully touristy but the backstreets are quite pretty – either that or superresidential. But it was ok!

Some drinks later we were out the door towards the harbor, hoping to catch it by sunset. There was a bit of running involved – and a lot of sweating – but we made it! And it was very nice. Kostas laughed at my inclination towards sunsets but I think if you have the free time to enjoy them then you should. During Regular Life Time (TM) one doesn’t really pay mind to them, so during Vacation Time I think one should! Anyhow on the way back, the big outdoor market celebrating local foods from all over Crete – I think the signs said it was only active during August – had opened back up, and it was hopping. We passed by one big guy that shoved two kinds of pastries and two shots each of raki at us – for free! We later tried to pay for some for breakfast tomorrow but he just told us those were free too. Pretty great! The rest of the market was pretty awesome. Most of the booths were sent by different municipalities in the Chania district, with their own raki, honey, meats, pastries, and cheeses. I’m very impressed with the amount and variety of stuff they can produce without any outside help…true local food! Such a cool little experience. We got full enough on the free samples, some spanikopita and some rice thing that we didn’t even go to a restaurant for dinner. I am pretty happy about the whole thing.

Now there is a Clint Eastwood movie on tv and we are relaxing … although I did see a cockroach skitter into the wall, which was not so relaxing. Hopefully there is just one. Otherwise tomorrow should be pretty nice and when it is over we shall sleep!

Forts and moussaka

Yay sleeping in! The sheets are really soft here at the Astali Hotel and they also gave us soft candies with the towels yesterday. I am a fan. Also the breakfast – comes included with the room – was pretty awesome as hotel breakfasts go! There was bread, blackberry and peach jams, honey, yogurt, cheese, hardboiled eggs, cereals, and milk that was actually cold…a good start to the day for sure.

Then it was time for walkin! After a brief stop at the apparently overhyped Archeology Museum (we weren’t impressed) we got to the Fortezza, where our student cards got us in for freeee. We’re back in a country that gives students a break, thank goodness. I also got a pamphlet guide this time that described all the sights within the fort walls, which was helpful. Peter insisted that we hit all the sights, and we saw a lot of things I hadn’t seen in the winter. There were some underground caves and storage rooms, some ready for exhibitions and some with fragments of old stones with Arabic carved onto them. That was cool. We found a little nook behind some out-of-control bamboo (I took a picture for you, Dad) and ate the second little tin of baklava that we bought yesterday. It was quite nice, and the breeze coming off the ocean was much appreciated. As dead as the grass is, the place is still really interesting for me, especially since some parts look rather Myst-like. So, a success.

After we checked off everything we descended back down to the old town once more. I got a spice set and Peter found a cheap Sudoku book – hooray! Then we got gyros to test the difference between cities (more tzatziki here, different spices) as Kostas had recommended, an idea that Peter really embraced. Then we headed back, intending to change to go to the beach. The hotel proved too comfy, though – Peter fell asleep and I didn’t really want to strike out on my own. Plus I seem to have a little sunburn so I just took it easy and looked up Chania stuff and balanced some expenses. Woo hoo. Fortunately Peter woke up just in time for us to get out and see the sunset at the harbor, which was very nice! Then we started walking towards some recommended restaurant destinations but in taking some back streets we found a place offering salad, wine, and 2 moussaka for 15E – not bad, so we stopped. The moussaka wasn’t fantastic but it was steaming hot and very filling. The salad was as good as ever – I’m so glad sad lettuce is a problem that has been eliminated here – and it was a good little place. I think we have evolved to the point that we can at least detect bad wine by now. It was homemade but not very exciting at all. But an okay meal, and we returned pretty sleepy!

Food and Rethymno

Uh oh, only 6 days left! Well, really 5 if you don’t count the 6th, which is entirely a traveling day. Trying not to think about that one quite yet. Anyhow we got off to a leisurely start, doing laundry and getting our last cream boughatsa and last Iraklion gyro (Kostas says they’re a bit different in each city) before heading down to the bus port. Getting on the bus and getting to Rethymno was fine up until we got into the city, where we didn’t know to get off before the big bus port. As a consequence of our confusion we had to walk all the way back across the city to get to our hotel. Oops. Oh well – it’s not an exceedingly large city to have to cross. And we’re here! In a nice hotel! We celebrated having a nice room with effective AC and a shower curtain for a while…oh the little things. Also our internet appears to be better (in that it exists) so hooray for that. Hotel Rea was probably the worst hotel we’ve been to. Sigh.

But anyway, we went back out and walked around the old city for a bit. Specifically, we looked at some very pretty sidestreets (Rethymno has a lot!) and scouted out the place where the baklava guy makes phyllo dough. Thanks internet for giving me the address! He doesn’t do stuff on Sundays but we learned from his wife that we can come back for a demo on Monday. That puts off our departure for Chania somewhat later than expected but it’s definitely worth it to see this guy. We bought some little tins of baklava to see what was in store for us (hint: delicious) and then happened upon Veneto, a restaurant that had been recommended by a few sources. It was very pretty both inside and outside – boasts being a restaurant and hotel for 700 years – and had free wine tasting, so we stopped in. It was way too early to eat but we took our time with the wines (white was dry, rose was great, red was kind of boring) and it finally was a respectable time to order food. And the food was very very good. We got a Greek salad of course, then a mincemeat and cheese pie that had mint mixed in and was good by itself, but then the last ‘appetizer’ came and wow. It was apaki, which is Cretan smoked pork, and it was seasoned really well – tasted like excellent saucy barbecue. We were happy! Probably could have stopped there, but as usual we ordered a bit more than we needed because too many things looked good. The last dish was veal marinated with some eggplant dip in the middle. It was pretty darn good too. Peter and I both think that, although it was a bit overpriced, it was probably the best meal we’ve had since Bea Vita, or at least one of them. Yay!

By then it was pretty late so we decided to head back. Unfortunately we seem to have gotten lost in a wormhole or something and ended up a lot further off course than we thought. It doesn’t help that the map we have isn’t great and the street signs are often nonexistent. Eventually we made it though, and now we are quite sleepy. Time to get all these posts out the door and go to sleep…a nice cold, quiet sleep…yayy…

Shopping and sunset

Slept in today…it is very loud in our room at night because we’re at ground level and have to keep the window open in lieu of having AC. As Kostas said, during the day the little kids play, then at night the big kids ride around on their motorbikes. Wah. Oh well, shouldn’t be a problem after tonight. Also we rewarded ourselves in the morning by going to get loukoumades and the cheese version of boughatsa, which I hadn’t yet tried. The loukoumades were pretty good, if a little cold, but I definitely prefer the cream boughatsa by a lot. Cheese was interesting but more like having some ricotta-derivative for breakfast. At least we tried it! We followed up by going back to the bakery for a few more things…I think by now we have tried most things in there. Yum.

Then we started our day of shopping! Having time to shop is pretty nice. We went up and down the market roads, into some supermarkets, checked out some clothes shops…ended up with a pretty good haul of gifts, clothes (for Peter..I’m still not having a ton of luck), and airplane-secure containers for the olive oil and raki that Kostas brought us. I now have three whole liters of olive oil so I guess I am cooking a lot! I also have 1.5 L of raki, unfortunately, but we’ll find some way to use it up I hope. At least when we’re done with both we will have nice mason jars for things.

For lunch we went to Ismir Kebap (kebap kebap!) and got souvlaki and lamb kebaps… deeeelicious. Peter and I lamented that we would like to continue eating Greek foods while being back at home. I’m just glad he likes the food (not that I really had doubts). Afterwards we went down to the Venetian fort on the harbor to check it out from the inside. I hadn’t realized it was open to the public last time! So we got to enter and it seemed a lot larger from the inside than I would have expected. There wasn’t really any information about the various rooms but it was still pretty cool, although windy enough that it was dangerous in a skirt. Ah well – a sight I haven’t seen, hooray!

I wanted to watch the sunset from the breakers but it was a bit early, so we walked down the ‘mall area’ on the coast. Didn’t find anything good to buy so we just got drinks and sat and watched the world go by, as the Greeks are so good at doing. Us fastpaced Americans only lasted 45 minutes but that was pretty good for just one drink (for us, anyway). Finally it was time for me to change into shorts so we could walk down the pier unflustered. I have to say the repeat experience of walking the whole pier was quite excellent, and although there weren’t any clouds to exaggerate the sunset it was still very nice. Lots of pictures taken also, of course. So relaxing! We then went to the restaurant by the pier that Ismat had taken us to the first night for dinner…ordered lots of things, including prawns and meatballs, and it was pretty good. They were a bit slow and missed bringing us one plate but we were full by that time anyway. A pretty good night in all!

Unfortunately the internet is out completely at the hotel – they’re having lots of issues with it – so we went to the big pedestrian street and used the municipality signal. It’s nice that Iraklion has so much free wifi signal! Having to surf in the presence of some creepy street performers was less than awesome but they went away fairly quickly. I didn’t have the posts ready in time so we just did mail and left it at that. Plus we were very sleepy!

First strike of the raki

We started the day off well – there’s a large bakery between the hotel and the supermarket that has all manner of tasty interesting things. We got some baklava, a chocolate-filled croissant, cheese danishes and a few other things for really cheap, and they were GREAT. It’s a chain, but it’s fresh stuff and still probably better than a lot of the bakeries we’ve been to thus far. Ah greek food. Peter observed that Greece had the most plump locals that we’ve seen in Europe and I would have to agree…it’s probably because of all the delicious food available!

After some walking we decided to do at least a little sightseeing, to the much-advertised CretAquarium that had just opened the last time I was here. That required taking a bus a half hour out of town but we managed it – the busses that run are actually coach busses, which is really nice. The exhibit was about the same, maybe a bit bigger, but it made up for not going to the zoo in Rome in terms of pacifying our inner little kid. The more interesting part, I thought, was the other part of the dual ticket – the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit. Why it’s in Crete, I have no idea, but I didn’t know much about the guy before we went so it was pretty informative. I didn’t know he was such an engineer, or that he dissected cadavers at night…guy was wicket smart but also a bit strange. But the museum did it well, and had some real models based on sketches he had made. Pretty ingenious stuff. We had to wait a while for a bus back into town but it was all right – cool exhibits accomplished.

In a very short time after we got back to the city we met Kostas to go to the beach. Since it was so windy he opted for a more protected place, which ended up being about a half hour “close” to the city by car. I think it was part of a resort, and it wasn’t actually a traditional beach – it was a concrete platform built over the sharp rock dropoff to make some oceanfront property. The water was really clear but really strong, especially when it starts out being about 10 ft deep. The swim was good and the view was great though! Definitely a novel kind of beach we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. In the ensuing time we talked a lot and sipped whatever we had ordered, as is customary. Very good!

Since he has to get up early to report to the army, Kostas opted out of dinner but we found a nice place anyway (after showering of course!). It was the Traditional Cretan Restaurant around the bend from the Irini and it ended up being a very funny night! The food was pretty good – best salad we’ve had in Europe possibly – but the desserts were also excellent. Got the sweet yoghurt with candied carrots again, which was just as delicious as I remember, plus some fruit. Yum! I really enjoy being in a place where a filling dinner is less than 30E and dessert comes with it. Greece is probably one of the cheaper places to eat I think. Also the owner recognized us, or at least the story I told him about being here, and gave us two little things of raki instead of one with the check. Oh dear. So I was pretty unprepared to write the post after I got back, oh well! Sitting with the only other customers plus the family just watching TV (Worms and then some nazi movie) and sipping wine or raki was very nice. In five years again, I told the waiter, maybe we’ll come back. It’s still strange to be back but it has been worth it for the food alone I think. Hooray!