After all of those trials and tribulations we are very, very thankful and somewhat incredulous that this morning, well really this afternoon, we are waking up in our new home on Crete in the village of Prines. It was three o’clock when we finally got out of bed. We really, really needed the sleep. Thirteen hours of sleep for me! Unfortunately anytime that I sleep that long, because of the CPAP, it is basically guaranteed that the stress on my sinus will result in a sinus infection and I feel a little under the weather today.
We woke up to the sound of a phone ringing. But it is an ancient Greek rotary phone and the sound was nothing that I expected to hear from a phone. It rang a lot before we figured out what it was. I ran down to the office and answered it. It was Sofia (after whom Villa Sofia is named), she wanted to know if they could stop by around four to give us a tour of the house.
So everyone was up, dressed and roughly cleaned up around four. Sofia and her son, who had let us in last night, came by and gave us the grand tour, walked us through everything that they could. It turns out that Sofia has lived in New York and has actually been to Perry, of all places!
My first order of business was to go down to the middle of town and look for supplies. We have a few Euros but very little money and need a few basics like bread and toilet paper. I went to the corner store right next to us and it appeared to be closed. So I walked on and found another tinier store that was open and I was able to get a very super basic things like the toilet paper (the only pack that they had there!) and a loaf of bread. We were pretty desperate.
I came home and we just ate bread with oil for dinner. The girls ate leftover snacks from the flight bag. We are operating pretty lean today.
After we ate Dominica and the girls came down with me and we found the closer market, the one right below the house, open so we stopped in and got a few more basics. Luciana was so excited that there were Kinder Joy (the local name for the Kinder Suprise eggs) here. So we let the girls each get one eating up the bulk of our remaining cash.
So the first order of business was for me to walk to the next down, Atsipopoulo, where there is supposed to be an ATM and a bigger market. I set out walking and made it maybe a kilometre at most before I decided that I had to turn around. The road was very narrow, traffic was surprisingly heavy and it was pitch dark so that I could not see the road at all and absolutely no driver could see me on the road. It was incredibly dangerous to the point where I risked just falling off of the road and would almost certainly be clipped by a car. There were no shoulders and often houses, fences or walls right against the road so there was no way to even step off of the road for safety like I normally do. This would not work at all. Back home I went.
We hooked up the video game rig tonight and got it working and played some video games before turning in for the night. Our day was spent almost entirely in the dark having slept so much. We can’t wait to get over the jet lag and hopefully tomorrow we will have money and maybe even a car.
The radiators upstairs are not working. It is very cold up there. The main floor has radiant floor heat which is amazing with the tiles. So comfortable. But the heat does not reach the second floor at all.
Tonight Liesl decided to sleep upstairs in the loft but Luciana decided to sleep down on the couch in the living room. Ciana is so weird.