March 27, 2016: Last Full Day on Crete

This morning was the change to Daylight Savings Time, or Summer Time as it is called in Europe, outside of the United States.  So we are now back to the same time difference with the US that we had when we first arrived in Greece.  Today is also Easter back home but Easter will not come to the Eastern Orthodox world for quite some time, over a month yet.

In a week when we are in Romania we will remain in the same time situation that we are in now, Romania and Greece share a time zone and summer time situation.  But the movement for this to change has begun with Russia and and Belarus having dropped the Summer Time concept at the end of 2014 (so this is only the second DST change that they have not done.)  With Russia having made the change, the encouragement for more countries to drop it is coming.  The Ukraine has been toying with the idea of not flipping time any more as well.  And California is considering dropping it.  But for the time being, Romania is on Eastern European Summer Time, just like Greece.  One of our rare times that we get to change countries and not change time zones.

Today is our big cleaning and packing day.  Dominica was up and getting the house in order before I was awake.  She already has a lot of stuff packed so there really is not all that much left to do and with the floors all being tile cleaning the house is mostly a matter of a quick sweep, then a mop.  And they are going to do some work on the house when we leave so getting it spotless is not a concern because they are going to generate dust and dirt and will need to clean it again regardless.  That makes things easy for us.

We got our rental car in Romania all squared away today.  Dominica has been watching this really low cost budget rental agency there and has scheduled what is supposed to be a Ford Focus for just seven hundred and fifty Euros (about eight hundred and forty dollars) for nearly three months, can’t beat that.  And that price includes the insurance, too.   It is so cheap to rent a car in Europe that we just cannot imagine ever buying one, the cost and flexibility of renting is just amazing.  And for an extra fifty five Euros we got “all European” insurance allowing us to drive the car more or less anywhere in Europe except for Moldova, Bulgaria and The Ukraine.  We are really hoping that that means that we are able to road trip to Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and Hungary at a minimum.

Dominica also got our transport to the ferry all squared away.  We have a van coming to get us at five tomorrow.  It’s less than an hour to Chania so we hope to be at the ferry around six.  We have a berth and are planning to check out luggage so the evening should be pretty easy, much like being on a cruise ship or staying at a hotel.  We have our own room that we can lock up and sleep in and there are restaurants on the ferry so we will be eating dinner on there.

We are all pretty excited about the ferry experience.  This is one of those quintessential European experiences, especially for Greece.  One of those things that Europeans do with hardly thinking but to Americans is almost totally foreign.  Major ferries carrying people between the mainland and the islands or between the islands.  But, overnight ferries loaded with people, cars, restaurants, entertainment and more.  This is very much a traditional Greek experience.  Everyone uses the ferries here in the islands.  Dominica is quite nervous, though, as she gets terribly sea sick and has no idea how stable the ferry is going to be.

I took out the trash and stopped by The Olive to let them know that we would be coming for dinner around nine tonight.  Then I walked to Atsopopoulo in the hopes of getting the sandwiches that the girls have fallen in love with but, as I feared, Momento was closed and I was not able to get sandwiches or coffee.  I tried hitting the gelato place (called something like Podov) that is on the south end of town but they put their gelato away during the day and that was not available either.  Rather a wasted trip.  But it was a nice day for a walk and I did get to see four baby goats at a farm on the way; they were adorable.

Back home we continued the cleaning and packing.  The girls were just watching shows all day.  Luciana watching LDShadowLady on YouTube and Liesl binge watching Sailor Moon.  They were happy to have a day of doing nothing.

The house is nearly empty.  It is always amazing to me how everything that we have collapsed down into just a few suitcases and magically disappears!

Our plans for tomorrow are to get up early and head to Rethymno General for Luciana’s final check up while in Greece.  Then we have to return the car to the rental place. Hopefully they can either pick it up or drop me off afterwards or else I am going to be stuck walking back from Rethymno to Prines which is very doable but is very much uphill at a steep grade the entire way and with our limited time tomorrow would be somewhat onerous.  They have drive up to deal with the car several times already, though, so I am guessing that this is not going to be an issue at all.  Greenways has been awesome to deal with, we highly recommend them.  They saves us so much money while living on Crete.

After the cleaning and packing was done we had a couple of hours to relax.  I got SGL caught up and everyone played some video games or whatever.  Then, when nine rolled around, we walked down the hill to The Olive for dinner.  The place was really busy tonight, busiest that we have ever seen.  Which is not really all that busy considering how small that the place is, but a family or group of six people having dinner really fills it up.

Dinner was awesome, as always.  And way too much food.  We had salad, domates, bread and tatziki sauce, tomato balls, lentil stew, a plate of fried sardines and Luciana ordered an omelette.  So much food.