February 18, 2016: Exploring Prines with Liesl

Got up at ten today.  Have a little bit of a headache, hoping that I am not coming down with the same thing that Dominica and Luciana have.  I’ve had a cough for days, so likely I have it just not as badly as they do.  Luciana woke up at ten as well, used the bathroom and went back to bed.    Dominica got up at the same time that I did.  Liesl slept in until afternoon.

It is a gorgeous, but windy day, here on Crete.  It is seventy three degrees and the sun is out.  I am very glad that I was up earlier than usual and got time to enjoy it.

When Liesl got up I managed to cajole her into walking to the corner market with me.  She never leaves the house.  She ended up being super happy the moment that we set foot outside of our door and she had a great time.  She danced down the alleys and was just so happy to be out and about in the sun.  She would stop at all of the open doorways to long abandoned houses and barns and look in.

We did our shopping, Liesl insisted on carrying the grocery basket while we did, then walked back home.  When we got home, Liesl wanted to explore the streets right around the house, so we took in the groceries and then went straight out and explored.  She then wanted to explore town!  She is very excited about getting out today.

We went in the house, ate a quick breakfast and set out for a walk together, just Liesl and me.  We went down to the north side of town and down the hill for quite some ways.  We did a round trip of about seven kilometers, it was a good walk.  And it was very downhill so the walk back provided rather a bit of exercise.

Liesl exploring a ruined home in Prines, Crete

The walk was gorgeous and we had a really good time together.  Liesl carried a little container of gummy treats that she had picked out at the grocery store on the corner and ate one or two now and then as we walked.  We walked out of the village and found the where newer houses have been built and interesting living areas and a surprising amount of traffic for being where we were.

Liesl was excited to be walking towards the sea and exploring.  It was a great way to spend the morning together.  And so nice to be out of the house.  And it gave her a much better appreciation for where we live as she has been pretty isolated from the fact that we live right by the sea all of this time.

Looking west from lower Prines, Crete. The peninsula at Chania.

The walk back up the hill was pretty exhausting, especially considering I, like Dominica and Luciana, most likely have the flu and this hit my lungs pretty hard.  Liesl had wanted to walk even farther but I knew that she was not picturing just how long and hard the walk back the distance that we had gone already was going to be when switching from downhill to uphill.  I was right and she was tired almost immediately.  It was a long trip back for her.

We got to see an assortment of wildlife, many sheep, goats, dogs and cats.  I was amazed at the variety of housing once you left town.  In my wanderings thus far I have not seen anything like these homes.  Very nice, modern homes, but in a classic Greek style, built some alone and some in very small developments.  They looked like wonderful places to live and many were actively in use, we could see people coming and going as we walked.

Once back it was time for me to write and Liesl to do school.  Luciana was finally up and very sick today.  Her fever is higher and she is not feeling well at all.  Dominica is slightly better, but not well either.  I was a little sick yesterday but today it hit me quite a bit more and I was rather under the weather for a good portion of the day but started to feel better in the evening.

This evening I made an emergency run to the next village for needed grocery supplies as we have run out of juice and stuff which Luciana has been living on.  So I stocked us up on that and came right back home.  It’s actually very quick and easy to do when the car is close by like it is right now, parked back at the church instead of way up the hill.

We had a pretty quiet night.  Luciana and I played a little GoatZ at her request, but she did not last long before she wanted to lay back down.  We are bit worried as her fever got up to 103 tonight, we know where the twenty four hour clinic is and are prepared to run there and we got a few names and addresses of paediatricians at the ready if we can manage to go there.  She tends to feel pretty well when she has had Tylenol so we are keeping an eye on her and ready to go if we need to but are hoping that the fever will break by the morning.

Dominica and the girls went to bed pretty early tonight.  I ended up being awake very late which I was not expecting but as the night went on I was feeling quite a bit better.

I went to sleep with Luciana again tonight but she told me that I couldn’t sleep there tonight.  She is very odd with that, last night she asked me to stay with her, it was so sweet.  Tonight she was very upset that I was there and made me leave immediately.  So I went and squeezed in in the other room, which is a pain as I have to move my CPAP around whenever I move from one room to another.  It isn’t as simple as it is for normal people.