Sail Crete

---

Wednesday, October 27
I slept like the dead last night and woke up early, my hair exploding all over the place, courtesy of a humid climate and going to bed with wet hair. It was a bit grey in the morning. The continental breakfasts of Greece, much like those in Israel, put anything I’ve seen in the states to shame, maybe just because I love the yoghurt here. With a little thyme honey and pomegranate seeds? Heaven. I got to drive today, which is quite fun. As we are returning to Heraklion, to meet the guys and catch the plane, we headed on this morning to Rothymnon and beyond. It stared raining as soon as we left and continued on and off all day. I am sooo glad I’m not on the boat right now, only because, even in the rain, we are seeing all sorts of cool places, like the teeny little monastery we stopped at in the mountains, and we are still dry. Woohoo. There were some really sweet little dogs at the monastery, by the way. I haven’t seen many otherwise. Rothymnon (the rufy town to many tourists, because of the name) is pretty big, lots of exits and such to get in. I parked on the waterfront and we had lunch looking at the Venetian castle at a corner of the bay. A sailboat came in that looked quite a lot like ours, but it wasn’t. I had Mousaka for the first time, which is delicious, and about to become a standard way of preparing eggplant in my kitchen. We returned to the car to find it nearly boxed in by another, which had parked at the opposite diagonal to the parking lines. We are learning that there are very few rules followed, especially about parking. Vehicles are parked in both directions on both sides of the street and even on the sidewalks. Ah well. I was quite proud of myself for getting us out of there. From lunch we went to the Archaeological museum by the castle, and then to the castle. The museum contains very little from the castle itself, but it was full of really beautiful artifacts, before and after the bronze age. On one wall they had a collection of bone awls and clay figures. the center of the room was full of unprotected chests that they had put back together. They were really beautiful, and I thought they should have been a bit more careful with the display. Every other person in the museum was touching them, even with the guard fluttering around. There was too much to stop. One of the really cool things I saw was the remains of a woven basket decorated with brass clip things. It was very lovely, and bout 4300 years old. The boar’s tusk helmet was also very cool. There were a ton of Roman sculptures and coins. It’s funny, but over here that stuff almost seems modern. Oh, you know, a couple thousand years ago, that was yesterday! Check out this painted clay pot from the Minoans! Head games. The castle was HUGE, and mostly rubble piles. The walls were intact, largely due to reconstruction, and a couple of the buildings had been rebuilt. Regardless, It was a great walk around, and looking over the parapet onto the jagged rocks on the shoreline was quite a trip. And piles and piles of unexcavated rock heaps, the remains of hundreds of years of occupation. Ooooooo! Heavy rain drove us back to the car and stayed with us all along the coast line to Chania. We could see, on the ocean, what looked like dust devils, only they were formed by water blowing off the tops of the white caps. No thank you. Driving in Chania is a bit like driving in Minos’ maze. I needed my Ariadne. But we found a hotel near the water, right next to a public garden.

---