Day 21, My last day of vacation

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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 or rat, but there are cats just running around and they don’t seem to belong to anyone since they are very skittish of people or at least me. We were told one of our first nights in Greece that there are only two things the Greeks do fast and that is talk and drive and to be honest it seems to hold true. Everyone is definitely on their own pace and if you are in a hurry for dinner or anything then that’s really too bad. I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ll say it again the lines in the roads mean nothing! The people are extremely nice and loud. I had it confirmed by my favorite Cretan barista that croissants with Nutella are very common, near as I can figure it’s a guilty pleasure like Little Debbie Snack Cakes. They have some of the bests and freshest tomatoes and a Cretan Salad is much better than a Greek one. Crete gets very windy which is a good thing otherwise the heat would kill you around here.

I’ve also had a few people tell me that Crete is a great place to be for the 6 months of summer, but after the tourist season is up everything really shuts down and there isn’t anything to do. I was told this by a Brit, Irishman and a Cretan. Although I think they were all gay (not positive about the Cretan) and we know how the gays love the nightlife especially here where disco is very much alive. Finally, while Starbucks has not dominated the world, Disney has.

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