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Live music
This was a great dinner! I had sausages with melted cheese and Dennis ate lamb (surprise!) Hey everyone! Well, a lot has happened since we last spoke (I guess wrote) to you all. Where did we leave off? Oh right, so the Samaria Gorge was closed on account of rain. So that day was pretty low key, we just walked around the town, checked out the market, went to the museum (freeeeeeeeeeeee because it was International Museum day!) and then just ate dinner at a place with live Greek music. It was super fun, but because the Greeks are such heavy smokers, our eyes were burning and even the musicians were smoking while strumming their guitars! It was insane.
The next day... this is where the fun started. We woke up to the sound of a knocking on our door. Hmmm, its our Pension owner, Lena, with news from my MOM? What???? She got an email from my mom (who we gave all our info to) that our flight to Rome had been cancelled (!!!!!!!) and we were rebooked at the 6:55 AM flight to Rome from Athens. Which meant, our flight from Chania to Athens at 6:45 was pretty much null and void soon enough! Uh oh! So off to a travel agent we
Dennis in our car!
Yep, he's still keeping an eye on the road! go! We ended up cancelling our flight from Chania to Athens (lost 50 Euro on that) and had to book a high speed ferry from Chania to Pireaus (port at Athens) from 9:00 pm to 1:30 am, at which point we would get ourselves to the Athens airport and wait for our 6:55 AM flight to Rome! Whew... that was nerve wracking wouldn't you say so Dennis?
I would, but thank goodness we weren't upset with the whole thing, just laughing!
I concur Dennis. So now, that was figured out, it was still rainy so no Samaria, so we decided "Hey, why not rent a car and at least go to another town to walk around in the pouring rain?" That sounds like a great idea! Dum de dum, off we go to the car rental place. We got a red Ford Fiesta (the later version of, yep you guessed it, a Ford Festiva, Dennis' old car!) for 60 Euro for two days (Samaria was closed the next day too we were told on account of rock slides) and unlimited km. Woot woot! So we pile into the car, and oooooh it's a standard this should be fun!
Outside Agios Sofia Cave
We are really getting good at self portraits! Haha, Dennis got very good VERY quick! We gassed her up and we were "On the Road again!"... Here's Dennis with MORE details of our party time in the car.
So we decided to head to this beach on the very south west corner of Crete. Bino recommended it as the most beautiful beach he has seen. Of course, at the time, he had not yet been to Kapari beach on Mykonos but we were determined to find out! So we got on the roads and I quickly had to forget all of my defensive driving lessons and driving rules that we have at home in Canada cause...well...they just don't exist here! It is a sort of everyone man or woman for themselves here! So we weaved through traffic and made it to the highway where we explored the Cretan country side in our red little car. The car, Bino, had four cylinders, not just three like most of these little tiny cars so it had some pep. Good ol' days of driving the Festiva....
We were not exactly sure where we were going most of the time but we made our way there quite quickly. Even their
secondary roads are in spots only one lane wide, kind of fun to drive, winding up and down the mountains. We stopped at this cool mountain pass to explore the cave of Agios Sofia along the way. It was pretty cool and the view from it was amazing. The cave was quite large and dark (not a place for you Mikey) and had stalactites and stalagmites all over the place. There was a single restaurant there and we had ourselves some lunch before continuing on our way. We stopped at a monastery just outside of Elephant beach, yes, we called it Elephant beach because Elaphonsi or whatever it is , well, we had trouble remembering it so we gave it a nickname.
Well Bino, as much as I hate to admit it, you are right, it is the most beautiful beach either of us had ever seen! It was absolutely amazing! The water was so crystal clear and shallow and the warmest we have seen so far. It curls around in both directions and we found this little sort of reef thing that we called our beach because it had this little tiny spot of sand and we were
View from Monastery
They have great views from alll the monasteries and convents here. No wonder there used to be so many more nuns and brothers! the only ones there so we camped out and played in the water. It was super fun! Of course, we were there at 5 till about 6:30 and it was still super warm. Ok, I know I am jumping around. I forgot to tell you that as we drove the sun came out more and more and it got really quite warm as we headed west. This is of course, vital, to the fact that we were playing at the beach!
Deciding that we were coming back tomorrow, we decided to leave to go and find somewhere to eat and try and drive back through the mountain pass in the daylight. We decided to stop just outside of Hania at a place called Platanais for supper. It is this beach type town resort area much like Sylvain Lake in Alberta. It even had mini golf places! We had a good supper and then made our way back into Hania in the dark because the sun went down. This was an adventure to find our hostel place because the street signs here are very faint and hard to read in the daylight nevermind the dark. But Kim with her excellent
Elephant Beach
This picture does not do it justice. We got a postcard that is a bit better. navigation and a few lucky turns by myself, we managed to make our way to our hostel through the maze of one way streets in Hania! We got back to our place and went to bed all excited for tomorrow.
Kim is going to type now...
Well we got up and went to church, it was the mass of the Ascension. It was mostly in Greek, but they sang a lot in English and Latin so we could follow a lot more. Then we made our way back to Elephant beach (Elafonisi beach, silly Dennis). We fell asleep there before going into the warm water once more. That was pretty much our day yesterday. We ate a great dinner and packed before heading to sleep early to go the Samaria Gorge tomorrow and then head to Rome!
Well.. I woke up at 6:00 am to call and make sure it was open. And.. nope. It was not. We were both pretty bummed about that. We were really looking forward to hiking it, and now we aren't going to be able to. I guess we will have to come back one day and make it (up for it
Our car!
Heehee, the red Fiesta!!!! Brings Dennis back to times of old. Dean and Elaine?). So now we decided to go on a 5 hour snorkeling trip around Kri Kri island. It will keep us occupied for the rest of the day before we head to the Port to catch our ferry. Soon we will be in ROME! I can't wait! I am sooo excited. (I am really exited too says Dennis, I can't wait to show Kim Rome). And on Wednesday we are seeing the Pope! The one good thing about our flights getting mixed up is that now we have a whole extra full day in Rome! So now we might take a different day trip to Siena or the Roman Port.
Well, we miss you all. And some of you might get some phone calls tonight considering we will be up from 1:30 am until our flight at 6:55am. We just might be bored!
Hope everyone is well, love you and God Bless!
Yours in Christ,
Kim and Dennis
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Deano
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Living Vicariously
Wowzers guys! It sure sounds like this has been quite the adventure. Sorry about the pink sand though buddy :( And I do agree. The tree looks similar to a Joshua tree in a greener space. Glad to hear that you've been able to re-live some of your younger years with the Fiesta there Dennis! Elaine and I eagerly await your return and have been loving the blogs. We are both happy for, and jealous of, you guys (though more happy than jealous :) Enjoy your next 9 days and keep up the fine smiling!