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…