Blogs from Greece, Europe - page 10

My plan was to go to Rethymno before Arkadi Monastery today but the traffic and parking gods had other plans for me lol. First things first, leaving Chania! My hotel is on the street where they do a big Thursday market so it was fun just to walk to my car - so much fresh fruit and veg..!! Some stuff I had no idea what it was lol, but the usual stuff was all there too and it all looked amazing. (I grabbed some cherries - I want watermelon but didn’t want to carry it / try to open it lol) The drive to Rethymno wasn’t bad - pretty solid traffic, but nothing awful. Getting off the highway was the start of the gong show though..!! Lessons learned, Thursday is market day so you do loose ... read more

Ok I actually slept really well on the boat?? The cabin was def worth it - in fact I only woke up as we were basically getting into port lol. No problem, takes a while to dock anyway and then forever for everyone to get off so there was no real rush. I wandered down the street hoping I was going the right way (I was, bless) to get to the bus station t o head to Chania (boat arrived in Heraklion). The station's super organized and clean... I wouldn't say overly obvious English info, but if you know the Greek name of where you're going it's super easy to find the correct bay/gate. The only English name I saw was "Chania" which I mean... I guess is what most tourists need to know anyway lol. ... read more

Better weather today, so off on a 6hr cruise around the island! I followed the find a field, park in field approach and everyone seemed to be parking near the port in between and around all these big boats... so I followed suit lol. (I came back to a very dusty car that people drew all over, but hey, that's fine.) Since I'm staying in the middle of nowhere I wasn't eligible for pickup from MyTours, which is fine bc it means I got there before most of the other passengers. Score. I got a seat on the shady side of the boat, which is perfect bc it's the side that's closest to the island anyway during the tour. The music onboard made me laugh - it was an old school English mix, like Can’t Touch ... read more

Day 1 + Day 2 Yesterday was straight up exhausting. 5hr layover in Montreal only to then leave 40min late, after sitting on the tarmac full and ready to go for +30 min (they were doing a systems upgrade? Really?) Not much of an effective upgrade, about 20 tvs didn’t work at all, mine included LOL. Really glad I had downloaded The Witcher and a few other short funny things - a +9hr flight with no entertainment would have been disastrous lol. As usual I didn't really manage to sleep... idk why I'm fine to sleep on trains and busses, but the planes never cooperate. Athens airport is pretty lowkey, if you like. I grabbed some bagel sandwich thing for lunch (was good!) and went to pick up my rental car. I'm using Avance this whole ... read more

Our next destination on the island of Crete was Agios Nikolaos Marina where with the help of our friend, Carole from SV Swallow we had reservations. When we left Sitia we expected no wind from the forecast, but we rounded a point and were pleasantly greeted with some nice winds for sailing – a wonderful surprise! We arrived at the marina and fortunately our friends, Carole and Paul as well as the marina staff and people on the neighboring boat were there to help as Bob overshot the place they wanted us so with their assistance and Bob’s correction maneuver (thankfully there was an empty berth across from us) we got in with no damage to Tsamaya or to anyone else. That doesn’t happen often when coming into a marina, but occasionally these things happen unfortunately. ... read more