MBrantley

Well, I made my way back to Athens and then onto a flight to Rome. Athens to Rome is such a nice short flight, it took about an hour and a half, but there was still time for drama. Just shortly after we reached our cruising altitude some woman started yelling. She was speaking Italian so I have no idea what she was yelling about, but a couple of the flight attendants went running. The 3 of them were yelling back and forth and then the head flight attendant came walking down the isle. You could tell from her walk that you did not want to screw with her and as soon as she arrived the yelling stopped and she was headed back to the front of the plane after only about a minute. You got ... read more

Today I had to bid farewell to Elounda and all of Crete for that matter. It seems that every time that I have to pack it is getting harder and harder. I don’t feel like I’m acquiring much more stuff but my bag is getting harder to close; I hope I’m able to get it closed after Italy. I pretty much spent the day trying to find a few last little things to shove into my luggage and resting up for my ferry ride to Athens. It occurs to me that there are some observations about the island that I have missed in my daily blogs, so here goes. There are cats everywhere. I will say that I prefer this quite a bit to London where there are rats everywhere. I haven’t seen one single mouse ... read more

Well today was another low stress day in sunny Crete. I did some laundry (Bill will be so proud) and laid around at the pool. I spent the day in the sun chatting with a very lovely English gentleman. We talked about everything from American life to politics in the US and abroad. I immediately liked him when he told me that he was sad to hear that Hillary would not be President. He’s a retired gentleman that pretty much just travels around Europe, although he has been to NY a few times. It’s very interesting hearing about American politics and life from someone that doesn’t live there. It seems that we are all very extravagant and we still have the mystic of the land of milk and honey going for us. If only life were ... read more

Well after going to the same coffee bar for a week, I decided to give it a shot in explaining to the waitress how I like my coffee. I stuck with a simple Americano but given the language difference it took a bit of time. In the end it is much better. It seems that at least here in Crete (every place we went to around the island had the same drink) that all iced drinks are whipped and not whipped with ice but with milk and espresso. It makes for a very frothy drink that I’m not really crazy about. Once done, my drink was much much better, now I just have to hope the same girl is here when I come back. Well other than laying around and enjoying the sun and the cool ... read more

Well, since Bill was gone I decided to take on an adventure that would eat up most my day. (I was much more successful at that than I had planned.) We never made it to the south side of the island so I decided to give it a shot. There are a couple of things that you should know here. First, there is no direct way to the south side of the island. Second, the main roads go from 4 lanes to 2 down to 1 with pedestrians everywhere so traveling anywhere takes a bit of time. I headed to Matala. (Oh yeah you should know that road signs are sporadic at best so you really have to be prepared going out and ready to turnaround a lot.) Matala is about 100 km from where I ... read more

Well we spent the day at a couple of different beaches, since Crete has tons of beaches. The beaches really vary quite a bit. We went to one beach that was very rocky with some ruins under the water. We did a little snorkeling. Billy Buddy claims to have seen some brightly colored fish while all I saw was very interesting but monochromatic fish. Who knows what he saw, colored glass?? The second beach is the type of beach you use for all of the postcards. It had mountains in the background, beautiful white sand, nice current and crystal clear water. We got a couple of chairs and an umbrella and laid around for a few hours. Other than just taking in the amazing scenery and a little people watching there isn’t too much to report. ... read more

Well at about 6 in the morning we made it to Crete. The day did not start off the best. It seems there was some confusion to our arrival time and there was no one at the dock to pick us up. It turned out ok. We had to wait about an hour but in the end it was no big deal. Elounda Beach is about an hour away from the dock. It was a nice drive. I find it very interesting how people drive in Greece. I noticed this in Athens as well. It seems that the lines in the road are well they aren’t even there for guidelines. People just move around the road as they need to and they like a good bit of space between the cars so if you are being ... read more