March 10, 2016: Running into Rethymno

Today was a very busy day with some big errands to run.  We are meeting the owner of the house’s wife in the city of Rethymno (which is very close) to pay for the heating fuel oil later today and we need to coordinate a bunch of stuff.  So getting up this morning was nothing but busy posting and writing all morning and on into the early afternoon.

A little after two we all bundled into the car and, thankfully we were not blocked in and the lights were not left on, and we headed off for Atsipopoulo first to hit the ATM and get cash and then on down the hill into Rethymno to see if we would be able to locate the town hall.

We had to park in  a part of town that we have not parked in before and parking in the city is always a little bit of a challenge and doing it at the height of the day makes it a big one.  I found a spot that was pretty good, though, and managed to squeeze in easily and we want out on foot to find a book store that Dominica had heard about that would do printing that we needed to have done.  That actually was far easier than we had imagined that it would be and we managed to get tons of printing done, for the first time since leaving Texas, along with some shopping, too.  It was a nice book store with a lot of stationary and art supplies and things.  Much like the old bookstore in the mall in Batavia, New York where I grew up.  We used to go there all of the time.

After the book store we walked around and found the town hall.  It wasn’t too hard, although the town hall building was very hard to identify.  We walked directly to the right place but spent some time trying to determine if it really the right place, but it was.

We met up and did the cash exchange.  We talked for a little while.  We forget that Greece is still under cash controls and getting money out of the banks for the Greeks is still a major problem.  They can only get a limited amount each week which much make many logistics really difficult.  Hard to believe that that problem is still going on.  It seems like that has been the case for more than a year now.  Imagine not being able to get out more than a few hundred dollars in cash per week for a year or more!

We did not have very much time to talk as we needed to race back to the house for the call that was scheduled late yesterday to discuss the issues that arose on ML yesterday.  We made it back just in time and it ended up being a very good call that went on for an hour or more!

I had just a little time to be writing and posting today before my next call just a little bit later.

So my day went quite late and there was a lot of just normal “stuff” to do with how much I was away all day.  So not much time to hang out with the kids tonight.