Sunday. GT2 Day Eight. Aptera, Crete, Greece.
Today is our first full day in Aptera near Chania, on Crete. It feels so much like being back home. It is awesome. Everyone slept in a lot this morning. I woke up at eight, but stayed in bed until nearly nine. My watch says that I got plenty of light sleep, but only an hour of deep sleep. I was woken up during the night by high winds slamming a shutter open so had gotten up and inspected the house and locked the shutters during the night which likely affected it. Dominica slept till just after night.
I came downstairs and started blogging this morning, chatting online, catching up on MangoLassi, etc. Uploading videos now that the pictures have been uploaded. Today is “officially” a “do nothing” day. We are all very tired, well everyone except me, and need time to recover. But having time to manage the uploads, charge devices, catch up with people, do my blogging, rest my muscles, enjoy the quiet, is very good. Dominica got up and started doing the laundry as well.
Emily first appeared at a quarter after noon. She said that she was feeling a bit better. She came down, made some lunch for herself, peanut butter on toast, and hung out in the living room with me for about two hours. But after two hours she was starting to drift off and fall asleep on the couch so went back upstairs to lay down.
I did tons of blogging today, there was a lot to be done. It was a super quiet day. Lots of breeze, and some kids around the corner that we could hear echoing in the mountain, but just about no sounds in the house. One of the most quiet days that I have had in a really long time.
I didn’t hear a peep from Emily again until a quarter after five. At some point mid afternoon Francesca told me that she had talked to Madeline, but I had not seen or heard from her all day.
Around five we decided to go check out the Cretan Corner tonight, and see if we can get dinner there. It looked so good last night when Emily and I drove by. We checked their website but they do not open until six thirty, because they observe siesta which is common in all of Greece, so we needed to wait for a while. Emily came down and five thirty and asked about dinner and agreed on that plan.
I finally saw Madeline at 5:45 when Dominica got her out of bed to take a shower so that she would be ready to go out to eat.
One thing that we have noticed is that this house is really full of cats and bees. We’ve found five cats that always are trying to come in now, and bees are constantly flying through the house. I rarely notice them unless Dominica or Emily are downstairs because they are terrified of the bees and are constantly screaming, jumping up and running away, and talking about them. When I’m alone they just fly around and don’t bother me, so I forget that they are there.
Just after six thirty we set out for the Cretan Corner, which is just down the hill. We stopped at the mini market at the bottom of the hill for supplies first. That only took a few minutes. They have a fair selection of stuff in there. That will be handy. We live in an odd, but interesting little community here in Aptera. It seems like we are so remote and that nothing is here, but there is a surprising amount of stuff lurking around every corner.
It was probably seven when we sat down to eat at the Cretan Corner. There are several restaurants on that corner and all were quite busy, even on a Sunday night! Very surprising. We got a seat by the back railing with an amazing view of the valley to the south. Madeline ordered chicken souvlaki, which she said was “okay”, but holy cow did she eat a lot of it. Emily got the chicken gyro and went nuts on it, she said that it might be the best meal that she has had in Europe so far. Dominica got a sea bream, grilled that she asked the cook to de-bone for her, which they did. And I got vegetarian spaghetti which was quite good. Very basic, but great quality and full of veggies. I was happy. I got an Alfa beer on draught. Dominica got some yoghurt with honey for dessert and I got some amazing baklava. The restaurant brought the girls each strawberry ice cream as a surprise.
We lingered after dinner for a while; it was so nice there. They invited us to come next Saturday to see the dancing like Emily and I saw for a minute last night. Emily and I have talked about it already and are hoping to make it to that.
We came back up to the house, but were only there for a few minutes before Emily asked if the bakery in Souda was still open, which it was. It was only about nine forty five. So she declared that we were going there. Dominica stayed at the house, but Madeline came with us. We drove out to Souda and got some more bakery items. Emily and Dominica got chocolate cake. Madeline got a chocolate cookie. I got an almond paste bar which was excellent and lighter than it seemed like it would be.
We were back home by about ten thirty. The house was way too hot, so I ate outside. Dominica was already in bed when we got back. The girls hung with me in the living room till about eleven, then went up to their room themselves.
I worked on the blog a bit, wrapping things up for the day. And uploading the few additional pictures that I had taken at dinner to Flickr. Then worked on uploading a few things to YouTube that had already gone to Instagram this afternoon. Then had to back up and clean off my phone.
The plan for tomorrow is to go exploring and to find a beach. We have not done a full “beach day” yet since getting to Europe, unless you count three days ago where everyone slept on the beach but that really wasn’t much of a beach day in the normal sense and it was not a sand beach like they are thinking. No idea which beach or even what kind of beach day we are planning for tomorrow, so we will figure that out more in the morning.
Luciana and I Snapchatted today, as we do almost every day. Liesl called me on Instagram tonight.