Sheep Guarding Llama

Day two of our two day stop off in Athens, Greece.  We saw the Acropolis yesterday so today we get to see the next things on our list.  We decided that today would be a museum and the Temple of Zeus, those are our big ticket items not to be missed.

We were up but not as early as we had expected.  We must be tired.  We set out to get waffles for breakfast but it turns out that no one had been paying attention yesterday and was not aware that Greek waffles involve ice cream and no one wanted that – I guess that I always assume that people are paying more attention as we had seen a lot of waffle places yesterday.

We ended up just going back to the same coffee and sandwich shop that the girls had loved yesterday.  They got the same sandwiches as yesterday and additionally Dominica and I got veggie burgers.

From there it was up the hill to the New Acropolis Museum which is at Stop 3 on the City SightSeeing bus tour schedule and nearest to our hotel at the Marble House.  This made things easy and from all of our research this was the museum to see.  Athens has many but this one routinely gets ranked the most important to see and in the top in the world.  We really did not want to miss this one.

The museum ended up being totally awesome.  It is a collection of the artefacts found in the New Acropolis when they was excavated and is really well done.  It is laid out quite well and easy to get around.  The had a “find the Athenas” game that the girls played that kept them engaged for the entire time that we were in the museum.  It is not a tremendously large museum so it only took around two hours to see.

We had a very nice time and are quite glad that we chose the New Acropolis Museum over some other choices in Athens.  This was a great use of our time.  We hit the gift shop and found some cool books.  It makes us sad that we cannot have a place to store memorabilia from places that we visit because that would be so nice.  We always find a little something that we would like to keep.  Here it was mostly books, but there were many that we would like to have had.

After the museum we caught the City SightSeeing bus again, they do a buy one get one day free thing that works out great, so we were able to use them as transportation around the city.  Next stop: the Temple of Zeus.

The Temple of Zeus is just huge.  It is a site down below the Acropolis in the main part of the city.   The site is not in the same kind of shape as the Acropolis is, but there are still some columns standing and some on the ground.  You can get a good sense for how big the original temple was and it is incredibly impressive.  We walked around, took some pictures but Luciana was getting ready to be done for the day so we had to move quickly.

Instead of taking the bus again we walked through the main city park which was pleasant and fast to get to the parliament building as the last thing that we wanted to see before calling it a day (and a trip to Athens) was the famous changing of the ceremonial guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier which we have seen on Rick Steves’ Europe many times.  On the walk we were able to stop and get some street food, some muffins and popcorns, to keep Dominica and the girls going.

We timed the walk well so that we arrived in time to beat the crowd, get a picture of the girls with one of the soldiers and be ready for the changing ceremony which happens each hour, on the hour, and lasts for about fifteen minutes.

From the guard we walked back to the nearest bus stop and caught the city tour bus again which took us back up to the New Acropolis Museum so that we could walk back to our hotel.  We decided that we would eat on the way back as we knew that once we were into the Marble House that we were going to be down for the night.  No one was going to walk to go back out again and our plan was to be asleep very early as tomorrow we have a very early tomorrow with our taxi coming to get us as a quarter after five in the morning which means that we are getting up at four in the morning!  That is going to be tough.  Early mornings with a lot to do are never fun.  So tonight needs to be early and relaxing.

The bus dropped us off and we walked nearly all of the way back to the hotel and decided to explore the pedestrian area near the hotel to see what we could find there.  We came up with a few options but Dominica was feeling like seafood so we went to Skoumbri and sat outside on the pedestrian way and ordered dinner.

At Skoumbri Luciana opted, of course, for calamari frito.  Dominica was brave and got cuttlefish on orzo which turned out to be black as it was prepared in cuttlefish ink which was a bit much for her.  Liesl went for grilled sea bass and I had a wonderful salmon penne in cream sauce.

Dinner was good and then it was back to the Marble House for us.  The girls watched YouTube on their Kindle Fires and Dominica read a book.  I went out for a walk for about an hour in the hope of finding gelato, but there was none to be found.  But it was a nice walk and I got to see a little more of the city on our last evening.

Bed early, probably around ten.  Going to be a very short night.  Our flight is at eight thirty tomorrow and we are due to land in Bucharest at ten.  On to our next adventure, today is the end of Greece.  Tomorrow… Romania and Transylvania.

 

Our alarm this morning was for about five.  The ship was set to dock at six in Pireas, the port of Athens.  The cell phone was working from the moment that I woke up so I have no idea when, if ever, it cut off during the night.  Coming into port the ferry goes along the shore slowly for a very long time so we could see the lights of mainland Greece going by all morning.

At the port we got to see the migrant refugee camp there. This is the very first that we have seen first hand anything of the migrant crisis here in Europe.  People ask us about that all of the time but Crete is not a part of the trail from Turkey to the EU so we have seen nothing of it.  But this was a small but real camp (and one that a few days later would make international news as a riot broke on there on the first of April while we were in Romania.)

Once into the port we took our time getting out of the room so that we were not caught in the throngs of people pushing to get out quickly (which, if I am not careful, is always Dominica who is impatient by nature with these things.)  We turned in our room key at reception and went down and collected our luggage.

This was the first that I really got to see how many full size trucks were on the ferry.  Now the ferry schedule and size makes sense to me.  The ferry is used as the main cargo ship going to and from Crete.  Because the ferry handles so much cargo there is little or no need for traditional cargo ships to go to the island(s) but they are still able to ship fresh produce to and from daily.

We managed to get a taxi that squeezed us all in.  Taxis in Athens are not large because the streets are so small is so many places that they cannot be.  He had to do a lot of magic with bungee cords and most of our luggage was pretty precariously hung out the back of the trunk but it did just fine.  The trip from the ferry port to our small hotel near the Acropolis was about forty minutes.  The driver had some difficulty finding the hotel as it is a small one on a very small street.  It was on a little dead end, actually, which made it extra hard.

It was seven in the morning when we got dropped off outside of the Marble House in Athens.  The front desk did not open until eight, which we knew, so we had planned on just sitting out front until they arrived.  Being on a dead end street made this very easy as they had a few cafe tables and chairs in front and were the last building on the street so we could just put all of our luggage by the tables and sit there out of sight and out of the way.  It worked out perfectly.  (We actually could have gone inside, Dominica forgot that we had been told of a way to sit in the lobby until the desk staff arrived and so we sat out in the chill morning air for a while.)

While we were waiting I went off in search of some breakfast.  I found a little coffee place around the corner that had coffee and traditional Greek breakfast pastries.  I grabbed one spinach pastry and one potato one and two coffees and returned to the Marble House.  The food was delicious – the best that we have had in Greece of this type of pastry, the girls declined to eat anything as they often do.  They sat on our laps covered in blankets to stay warm until the staff arrived at eight and we moved the luggage into the lobby.

Our room, number twelve, was on the second floor up a long flight of stairs.  The room was big and nice but we had to share the bathroom with one other room.  We hate sharing bathrooms, especially when we are on a tight schedule.  Sometimes it works out fine, sometimes it is a major problem.  Our room even had a nice balcony.  The room was not actually ready for us yet, but it was empty so they let us move the luggage up and drop everything off so that we could set out to see Athens as we are in a time crunch.

It was easily before nine in the morning when we set off on foot to head to the Acropolis, our number one sight to see in Athens.  It is a short, but uphill, walk from the Marble House to the Acropolis so was a little tiring with the girls in tow.

We went by a little coffee and sandwich shop and the girls demanded that we go in for sandwiches.  We wanted coffee so were okay with the stop.  Of course Luciana wanted just cheese and mayo.  Liesl wanted something without cheese, loaded with veggies and lots of mayo.  The two of them have different parts of my tastes in sandwiches, it is very funny.  I like my sandwiches with cheese, loads of veggies and mayo.  The mayo is the unifying component.

We finished up the walk and arrived at the Acropolis.  It’s not very expensive to get in, but even off season early in the morning it is pretty crowded.  We were not as early as we should have been, we should have pushed hard and gotten here at eight thirty, it was likely ten now and school groups were coming in by bus constantly.  It’s an insanely popular thing to go see, of course.  But we still go there when there was only a light crowd compared to the normal, which was good.

The hike up to the hill is not a minor one and the rocks are very slippery.  It was a hard walk for the girls but we made it up and, of course, the Acropolis was spectacular.  There is really nothing like it anywhere.  The buildings themselves are just amazing, but the view is really something too being on a high hill in the centre of Athens which is a massive, sprawling metropolis of just over three million.

We took a bit of time to walk around, take pictures, let the girls rest for a while.  The centre of the Acropolis is actually empty and there was plenty of space to get out of the way and relax.  It made it easier to take in the immensity of the place.  We are so glad that we managed to come here.  This is one of those top life bucket list locations but is still so easy to miss.

We did not actually stay long.  There is actually nothing to do on the Acropolis.  There are a few buildings, some amazing views and that is it.  You cannot go into anything and they need to move people through so nothing has been added.  It is purely a small archaeological site and nothing more.  So impressive, but does not require even an hour and that’s if you linger extensively.

We left the Acropolis and went along the Agora but there was little to see there and we got dumped into a side street in Athens a long way from the hotel which is on the other side of the hill.  So we skirted the hill with the GPS not working making it frustrating.  We were in a tourist area, of course, being near the Acropolis and we stumbled on the Hard Rock Cafe so Dominica ran in and bought a pin for Rich who collects those.  This, like Oslo, is a tough one to get.

We did a bit of a walk and found a pedestrian way.  We went down there and stopped midway and got gelato which was very good.  The tourist area of Athens is full of street hawkers which is incredibly annoying and makes you want to immediately leave. I suggest that Greece look into a tourist police system like Morocco and start cleaning things up because while Athens has some of the most amazing historical sites in the world, the street hawkers make the atmosphere horrible and make Athens only viable as an educational stop and no fun as a place to visit on its own.  The whole thing is too close to Venice with its “all for show” mentality and everything made in China and the whole thing just put on for the tourists.

On the way back we came to Syntagma Square, the famous main square of Athens, and there we managed to pick up the bus for the City SightSeeing Tour which we had wanted to do.  This meant no more walking for a while and a chance to see the bulk of the city.  We always do these tours when we are in a city like this, especially if our time is limited.  They are a good deal, provide transportation and let us make sure not to miss any of the big things.

We all appreciated the ride and the girls slept for a lot of it.  It was bright and sunny and warm.  I even dosed off for a few minutes.

The tour was nice and once we were back on Syntagma Square we decided to hit the McDonald’s there because it was close and easy, literally right at the stop, and because they have the Eastern Orthodox Lent menu there that is totally unique to this region and we have to try it.  I know how awful it is to eat at McDonald’s when in Europe, trust me I know, but this is our first of doing anything of the sort while in Europe (and we’ve been here a full three months) and this is for a special reason.  We really wanted to know what the lent menu was like!  Our entire meal was stuff we have never had nor even seen in America (or anywhere, for that matter.)  Eastern Orthodoxy takes Lent so much more seriously than any other Christian sect and does full vegetarian for over a month, so it is a big deal to cater to that.

Dominica got a shrimp salad, Liesl and Luciana each got an order of just shrimp and I went for a veggie burger (no kidding, they actually had this) and we all split some veggie bites.  This was rather a serious McDonald’s food adventure.

All of the food was okay but really was not very good.  One of the biggest issues was that all of the sauces were wrong.  Liesl got nothing to dunk her shrimp in at all, Luciana got sweet and sour sauce which was a good choice but not something that the girls like.  Dominica’s salad had something akin to a French dressing which wasn’t very good, but she thinks that it would have been good if they had had ranch, which is how this would have been served in the US.  My burger lacked anything but ketchup, I think, and should have had Big Mac sauce and cheese and it might have been decent.  The veggie bites also came with nothing.  McDonald’s food depends on the dipping sauces to be good so this was pretty bland.   Had we spoke Greek we could have discussed that stuff when we ordered but we had to take the defaults and they were not good at all.

From the McDonald’s on Syntagma we were able to jump onto the City SightSeeing bus again and ride it a few stops up to the stop near the New Acropolis Museum which was just above our hotel and walk down from there very easily.  Everyone was tired at this point between the ferry, taxi, hotel, walking, sight seeing, more sun and food that we decided that it was time to call it a day.  We have a busy few days coming up and we cannot be burning ourselves out all at once.  The girls really wanted to just relax in the hotel and play with their toys and use their Kindle Fires.  So that is what we did.

While the family was relaxing in the hotel as there was nothing else to do I went out for a walk to see a little of the city.  The area that we were in was not super conducive to walking but I was about to see some amount of stuff.

After relaxing for a while I got sent out to look for food.  No one felt like leaving again, they were all tired.  So I walked around for a while figuring out what the local options were.  We ended up settling on a pizza which I picked up and delivered back to the Marble House.

It was pretty much straight to bed after dinner for us.

I was awake, without a clock, before nine this morning.  I did not bring my phone to bed, it does not work up there anyway, because it was plugged in on the desk to be sure that it would be charged for today so when I woke up and Dominica was still asleep I panicked that we had slept through the alarm and got out of bed anyway.  It turns out that it was early, but a good time to be up regardless.

What a busy day.  Dominica and I did some work and got ready for the day and got the girls up a little after ten.  We did a decent job of getting out the door and down to Atsipopoulo to go to Momento and get our morning coffee (not going to make any coffee in the house in case it makes a mess) and sandwiches for the girls as it is their last time to get these sandwiches that they love so much (for Liesl it is simply lettuce, tomato and green bell peppers with mayo and for Luciana it is just cheese and mayo.)

We did our final drive into Rethymno and up to the hospital.  Our plan for today was, now that Luciana did her final antibiotics last night, to get a quick test done, make sure that she is all good to go and leave quickly.  There was quite a lot of kids in queue for the doctor, though, and we ended up having a long wait. They came out and talked to us right away, took her temperature and started paperwork, but to get to the lab work was going to take hours (it takes over an hour just for the lab itself to do the test anyway) and we did not have that kind of time.  Around one thirty we made the call that we just had to bail on the process and assume that we need to look into getting some lab work done when we get to Romania.  We have to do an ultrasound in Romania anyway and they will probably want to do this lab work up there as well, so it does not seem like it is all that bad, really.  But it does mean that our entire morning was a wasted trip and a lot of effort that we could have skipped.

We were back at the house before two and spent the rest of the afternoon getting the house in order.  Lots of sweeping, mopping, packing, balancing luggage, charging batteries, cleaning out the fridge, carrying trash down town, etc.  Always so much to be done when moving out.

A little after three Greenways came up and picked up the car which made things so much easier for us.  We were very thankful that they were willing to do that.  Otherwise I would have had to have made a second drive down to Rethymno, cross the whole city, get to their offices, deal with stuff there and then either spend more than an hour (maybe two) walking back up the hill or gotten a taxi all the way from there. This made things very simple and easy.

Our van to take us to the airport was scheduled for five and to pick us up down at the corner.  We knew that we needed a van and that it would be well worth the extra cost to know that we were going to just fit.  Trying to squeeze into the normal taxi with the trunk tied shut to keep our luggage in for a trip of over an hour is not fun.  And we really do not need any disasters on our way to the ferry, there are too many connections to make.

Everyone, except for Dominica of course, is looking forward to having the evening on the ferry.  Such a cool experience.  Ciana is a little worried that the ship will rock and that she will fall out of the bed, however.

Sofia, who owns the house (it is the Villa Sofia after all) came and hung out with us for a little while before we left.  We were all packed up and the house was cleaned and we were ready to go.  When the van arrived early she even helped us to move the luggage down the hill to it and get us loaded up.  We turned over the keys and said goodbye.  Dominica talked to her for a minute while I ran to the corner store (the taxi van was parked by the corner store anyway) to pick up last minute snacks and say our goodbyes to the woman who runs the store as we have seen her every day for the last three months.

Three months!  I can’t believe that our season in Greece is over.

The van was a brand new, luxurious Benz.  Lots of space for our stuff and room for us and then some.  It was great.

The drive to Chania takes around an hour.  It was a beautiful day for a drive.  Great views of the mountains and sea.

The ferry terminal is actually in Souda Bay, famously the home of the NATO base.

It was only six when we pulled into the ferry terminal, a full three hours before the ferry was set to leave port.  We didn’t care, getting to the ferry nice and early and knowing that everything was all set was well worth having time to kill on the ferry itself.  This is what we want when we are doing major travel – lots of spare time and no stress.

We were, I am pretty sure, literally the first people to board the ferry for this trip.  Three hours is a bit of an extreme amount of being early and this is only the ferry for the eastern third of the island so only people from a maximum of ninety minutes away would reasonably consider using this terminal instead of the one at the capital.

Since we were early the ferry operators let us just drive right up onto the ferry with the taxi van and unload our luggage right into the luggage holding cages which was so handy.  This is so convenient.

We went up to reception and checked in.  We got a berth on the six floor just a few doors down from reception.  So easy.  Our berth had a big window, four individual beds, a desk and chair, a full bathroom with a shower and everything.  Small for a hotel room but so much larger than you get on a train.  Very nice indeed.

Everyone is very excited about the room.  This is going to be quite fun.  Going on an overnight ferry is certainly a bit of an adventure.  There is only one power outlet in our room, though, so we are very limited on what we can plug in.  My CPAP will be all set and we do carry a European power strip with us these days but we can’t just plug things in all over the place.

I went down and explored the salon on our deck.  It is a nice area with a lot of room.  We had been hoping that they would have a large menu but they did not, just drinks and snacks, nearly all of which had meat.

I returned to our berth, grabbed the family and we went exploring the ship to see what else they had for us.  In the room were ads for two restaurants that were not the salons that would likely be just perfect.

I should mention that the ferry is enormous.  Bigger than any ferry that I have ever seen.  This is far more akin to a cruise ship that also carries cars and trucks than it is to any ferry that I have ever used.  This is a really, really big ship.

We climbed up to the eight deck and up there we found the restaurants that we had been looking for.  There were two, right next to each other.  One is the self service cafeteria and the other is the fancy “please don’t wear shorts or jeans” place with a four course meal.  They were getting ready but were not serving yet, it was still very early.

I went to reception and learned that the restaurants open at eight, one hour before the ferry departs at nine.  That is not bad.  But it was only seven.  Back to the cabin where we just relaxed for a while.  The girls played with toys.

Pretty much right at eight we went back up to get dinner.  We were all very hungry and Dominica and I were actually feeling a bit tired and were quite willing to eat and get to bed straight away.

We just did the self service restaurant.  We would have been happy with the fancier one but who knows if the girls will eat enough for it to make sense and we were not dressed for it.  Dinner was quite nice and we were just about the only people in the restaurant which is perfect when you have restless kids.  Dominica and I both went for the salmon dinners, which were tasty.

We returned to the room just before nine.  Instead of being the only people on the ship, it was now packed with the salons full and people camping out in stairwells and such.  We got to our room and the girls played for just a little bit longer and before ten we were all in bed and heading towards getting some sleep.

I ended up having to sleep in one of the top bunks because Luciana was scared of it.  But overall it went well.  The berth was very comfortable.  This is the way to travel.  Cheaper than flying and way more comfortable.  And as it goes overnight we really lost no time compared to flying, maybe even got more time on either end because it was so well suited to our needs.

One thing that surprised me is that I maintained mobile phone service way out into the Aegean Sea.  I was still able to post to Twitter and such even when we were nearly an hour out of port!  That was very convenient.

We started a new Twitter feed today for our travels: https://twitter.com/packthekids

That will be the most up to date way to keep up with us as we see the world.

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.

Dominica got up and found crumbs all over the floor and, of course, ants everywhere.  This has become our thing, finding ants everywhere.  It’s been the year of ants.  Although this past stay on Crete has been relatively few, considering that we have been here for three months there have not been that many.  So Dominica’s morning was spent Windexing the floors all over to get rid of the ants which I then cleaned up later.

Once the kids were awake we were out to the car and on our way down the hill.  This is our last chance to get out and do anything on Crete and we are heading around Rethymno again as it is convenient and we really wanted a chance to see more of it.  This is my third time getting time to explore the old town, not including the marina area which we have been to several times on its own.

We stopped in Atsipopoulo at Momento to get coffee and sandwiches for the girls.  They just love those sandwiches.  Then we went down to Rethymno and parked in the same spot that we did the other day, it was very convenient.  We are not walking around the Fortezza today, though.  This time it is straight into the old town and staying on the flat ground.  A much more relaxing walk.

We walked east along the south side of the old town exploring some of the streets before getting to the big north – south thoroughfare, Antistaseos, just north of the Guora Gate.  We headed north along the big shopping way and found some places that looked like they would be great for lunch later on.  Then we got back to the Mikrasiaton Square where we had been the other day and let the girls just run around for a while.  They were having an awesome time playing until Liesl got very scared because she got in the way of a truck and was not paying attention to it or the locals yelling to her and did not see it until she turned around from me screaming at her from all of the way across the square and turned around to find a truck right behind her (it was a maintenance truck that clearly was watching her and she was in no danger but was blocking them from driving around the square) and it really shook her up.  So she spent quite some time sitting along on a bench far away from us and not talking to anyone or playing.

When we left the square we stopped at the Gelato.it stand on its corner and got some gelato for our walk.  The girls both got vanilla, of course, Dominica got fruita de bosca yoghurt as she often does and I got Spring Forest (Black Forest, in the US.)  On the walk north from there we discovered a line of restaurants that looked perfect and one had a menu that would definitely suit us so we figured that we would be returning after our walk.

We came upon the famous Rimondi Fountain which was super neat.  We stopped there and ate our gelato.  The foundation is only a small piece of what used to be an enormous Venetian works there, but the hydrolics still work and water still flows from the fountain which, along with its immediate wall and some pieces of an earlier building, remain in the same state that they have been in since the Venetian Empire built them there to provide extra water to the growing city in around 1628, the hydrolic engineering project being started around 1588.  A really cool historical find right in the middle of restaurants and shops.

We did a loop to the north west and returned to the fountain, sneaked behind it into some really quiet little streets and continued east until we got to another main road going north up to the port, Arkadiou.

We walked up to the port and turned east and walked around the Venetian Harbor.  The old Venetian Harbor is pretty much as it was hundreds of years ago and has great views on the current marina area.  There is a lighthouse there that is a bit precarious to get to.  I walked out to it and Dominica stayed back with the girls.  At least I got a few pictures of it.  Luciana really wanted to go out to it, though.  So Dominica stayed back, as the walk out along the old harbor wall would be terrible for her ankle, and I took the girls carefully out and then, at the light house, took them one at a time against the “hug the wall and walk sideways” portion so that they could go all of the way out.  On the way along the wall Liesl discovered loads of sea urchins living on the rocks just below the water line.  The water was almost perfectly clear so we were able to really observe them well.

From the harbor we walked back south the way that we had come and made it back pretty easily to the restaurant, Agrimia, that we had been interested in with the great looking seafood menu.  They turned out to have a huge play room for the kids which was perfect.  Liesl and Luciana went straight there and were there for the whole evening, only returning to the table to eat quickly and then straight back.  It gave us a very relaxing dinner and time to just hang out.

Dinner was awesome.  Liesl got pizza.  Luciana got calamari.  Dominica and I got garlic bread with aubergine salad, seafood risotto and then she got a vegetable risotto and I got stuffed vegetables.  We were very full by the time that we were done eating.  But it was great and we were really glad that the girls had such an awesome time playing all evening.

Everyone was pretty worn out from walking, playing and sun all day so we walked back to the car, it was now dark anyway.  The walk through the Rethymno streets at night was at least as magical as it is during the day.  The old town remains completely gorgeous.

We drove back up the hill to Prines.  Everyone was ready to just have down time.  The girls watched some shows and Dominica started reading.  I figured since everyone was doing their own thing that it would be a good time for me to go out for a walk.  So out I went to do another few kilometres before calling it a night.

I did a nice loop to the north of town.  I started taking the western of the two northbound back streets from the centre of town and ended up looking mostly to the west and returning to the main street via the northern side road that comes into the village at The Olive.

As I walked by the owner ran out and said that I should come in and drink with the locals.  So I ran home, dropped off what I was carrying, grabbed by wallet, let Dominica know where I would be and returned to The Olive to hang out for the rest of the evening drinking raki with the locals.

It was a fun evening.  At first it was just me and a few of the older guys from around the village.  There were several rounds of raki and some snacks… fresh artichoke slices, some olives and then raw broad beans.  We tried hard to communicate, very hard as there were two people who knew zero English, one who knew a tiny bit and the proprietor who knew a bit and me who knows zero Greek.  Later on they left and a couple who own a taverna nearby came in and hung out having dinner and more raki.  I was there till around midnight and closed the place down.