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Published: September 6th 2008
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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. I will stop here for a moment and explain that there aren’t many pictures of people on the beaches because many of the women go topless and many of the men wear Speedos, neither of which I care to immortalize in digital format especially since it’s never the ones that you want to see dressed this way.
After spending most of our
day lazing around the beaches we decided to go into the town of Aghios Nikolaos. Reportedly this was once a quaint little fishing village. Now it is a bustling metropolis (by Cretan standards) with lots of beach to relax on and plenty of shops to keep you quite busy and broke. One oddity that I have noticed in both Crete and Athens is the large number of shops to buy high end furs. It seems a bit warm to me, but hey what do I know.
After a little bit of a break and an unsuccessful attempt to read my e-mail (it seems the internet isn’t quite ideal here), we headed off to Malia for some dinner and a night of drinking and dancing. Well, Malia is quite the experience I suddenly felt like I was back at Palm Springs on Spring Break. There were young 20 somethings running around on 4-wheelers with no shirts on drinking and generally creating havoc (this makes me sound real old, but truth be told I felt old in this crowd). We looked for a place to eat and almost everything was English themed. We were surrounded by Brits and pubs; it was
like being in England without all the arrogant, stogy museums. You get the idea.
We managed to find an actual Greek restaurant in the mix of all of the crazy Brits and then we headed down to Eros. Eros is the only gay bar on the island of Crete. Reportedly Thursday thru Saturday are the busiest times to go. The bar was supposed to open at 9 and we got there a little before 10 (I know way early on gay time, but we are old). We walked up and the owner said they weren’t open yet, but to have a seat and he would get us some drinks. Lee, 28, one of the owners was very nice and it was fun chatting for awhile with him. We met his boyfriend, his boyfriend’s parents, his sister and the DJ. It’s worth mentioning that the parents, brother-in-law and the 2 owners all live upstairs of the bar. It was a very interesting time. Not at all what we had pictured but it was very enjoyable to hangout, drink and chat. Around 12:30 and only one other patron had showed up, a nice guy from Belgium, we decided to call it
an evening and headed back to Elounda.
It seems the gay life on Crete isn’t very active on a Thursday. Lee said that Saturday around 12:30 or so the place is packed. I may try and go back but that is awfully late for me to stay awake and I’m still a little nervous about driving around town in my little rental go-cart.
In fairness to Billy Buddy I will let you know that on the way back from Eros I managed to go the wrong way down a one way street. I still have no idea what made it a one way or how it was noted, but the police that pulled me over seemed rather convinced of the fact it was a one way and I don’t think I would have been able to persuade them otherwise. They were really nice and let me turn around in the middle of the road. Truth be told, I think they were just glad that I wasn’t drunk like everyone else around me.
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CXZ
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yummy hat pic.
Looking good Mr. Brantley! And Bill 2 :-) Miss you guys.