Sheep Guarding Llama – Page 258 – Scott Alan Miller

March 13, 2016: Carnival

We were up at nine this morning so that we could get ready and get out to go to Rethymno to see the Carnivale parade in the city! Everyone has been telling us for weeks that we really, really need to not miss this while we are here and that the kids will love it. We have been making quite an effort to make sure that at the very least we do not miss this as this is really a once in a lifetime opportunity as the Carnival parade here in Rethymno is supposed to be one of the best ones in the area. Rethymno being an old Venetian town has a lot of big Carnival tradition stemming from that.

We were not just awake but we managed to get out of the door, into the car (not blocked in this time) and on the road by ten and in no time we were in parade traffic in Rethymno! It is a good thing that we already know our way around the city a little or this would have been very difficult as an introduction to the lay of the city.

From barely into the city from the west side we were caught in traffic that almost did not move. We were seeing people parking on the west hill on the road leading into town and walking in. Now we understood why. If we managed to find a place to park we were going to be trapped in the city until the parade was over!

We did surprisingly well and navigated the city and managed to dive down a side street on the east side of the peninsula, get to the water front and find the marina parking. We went into the paid parking in the marina area and just paid for parking there rather than scrambling to find free parking somewhere in the city. We were sure that there was a lot of free parking to be had but the stress of finding it and the difficulties that it was going to present just seemed foolish. The paid parking was safe and easy.

We got out of the car and walked through the old town and down to one of the main streets finding where it was roped off and ready for the parade. We checked the time and it was a quarter to eleven in the morning! We had actually done so well that we were in place, ready for the parade more than two hours before it was set to begin! We surprised ourselves here, trust me.

We were so early that we could not just wait around for the parade. The kids would be pretty pissed and done with the whole affair if we waited for that long. The girls had seen a small playground as we drove to the parking area at the marina that we set off to look for. We actually found it and the girls spent a good hour on the swings, slide and merry go round. Crete has been rough on them for not having access to playgrounds and they are sorely being missed. So this was a really nice opportunity for them to get to enjoy some time on one and to work themselves up to being ready to just relax and watch the parade and to have some lunch. Dominica and I enjoyed the chance to just sit for an hour.

The girls on the playground waiting for the parade.

By the time that we left the playground the bars and restaurants along the parade route were really busy. We walked all of the way back to where we had first seen a pizza place when we had first emerged onto the parade route from the old town and found that they still had a table out by the road that was empty. So we ran in and ordered a pizza and some coffee and planted ourselves right up front along the route with a table, food and beverages about an hour and a half before it was time for the parade to begin. Total score.

The girls absorbed in their Kindle Fires and ignoring the awesome pizza that had just arrived.

Lunch was good, we took our time with it as we wanted to stay in this spot throughout the parade. Once the parade got started we actually ended up giving up our table and moving up to the rope so that we could really see everything. Liesl and Luciana sat at my feet and eventually Dominica came up and joined us, as well.

I was very diligent about taking pictures throughout the parade and over the course of it managed to get just short of four hundred pictures and quite a bit of video footage. Liesl and Luciana sat at my feet for the whole parade, they had a great view of the whole thing.

Liesl and Luciana Watching the Parade at My Feet

Because the girls were adorable and right up front where the parade could see them tons of the girls in the parade would come over to them and pull them into the parade to dance. They had an awesome time! A boy, maybe nine or ten, came and sat beside Liesl and they spent an hour at least hanging out with each other watching the parade.

One of the parade teams coming by stopped, danced with Liesl and then gave her a mushroom cap to wear. She loved it. The boy that she was sitting with would repeatedly steal it from her and make her try to find it or get it back. They were very cute.

The parade was very long, it went on from two and by closing in on five there was a lot of the parade left to go. Throughout the parade it was getting darker and gloomier and for the last half an hour it was starting to sprinkle and, sadly, it was cold rain coming down. After that, it turned from spinkle into rain into rather heavy rain with the streets starting to fill with water.

Towards the end of the parade Luciana just could not take the noise and the activity any more and wanted to go to sleep. She made Dominica hold her for a while and then I held her for a while. Probably, in all, we might have held her for the last hour of the parade. This added heavily to our exhaustion. We were in physical pain from standing and holding her for so long by the time that everything was done.

We held out as long as we could, we did not want to have to miss any of the parade but what started out as “doing a good job dealing with less than ideal weather” turned into “utterly ridiculous to be standing on in these conditions.” Dominica and the girls were trying to stay under umbrellas but that was doing very little to keep them dry and I was absolutely soaked through, even before we left the parade route. We had to eventually cut and run with a lot of the parade left. But at least we were some of the final people still out watching the parade and even the parade itself was giving up and breaking down from the amount of water coming down. Very unfortunate that after weeks of almost no raid we get a serious storm during the small window of the parade!

We ran for the car but it was rather a long distance. We were all quite soaked by the time that we got to the car. We just sat in it running the heat for a while to dry ourselves out and to let traffic clear as the city was crammed with people trying to leave the city and the rain was making traffic that much worse.

It was around six when we got back to the house. A massively successful day! Our first time really going out and doing a Greek event. We feel very accomplished and happy and exhausted. Up early, out the door early, full day of playing, eating and Greek and Orthodox cultural events, weather battling and safely home again. A full day, for sure.

Much of the evening was spent getting pictures and videos of the parade uploaded for people to see. I had completely run through a battery on the Nikon AW100 and then had to ditch it and switch to the iPhone 5s for the last bit. The GoPro, sadly, had its batteries die before we even got started and the charger was not to be found quickly and we had to do without it.

March 12, 2016: Our Video Game Day This Week

Today was a short day for us, up late and off to bed early. It’s Saturday and we spent most of the day playing video games together. The video game laptop and projector in the game room are really paying off. One of our best investments for quite some time. We had guessed that these would really get used but we use them so much more than we had imagined with all four of us loving the opportunity to really get to play some things.

We did a bunch of gaming today. I did a little work, paying bills and such, but not too much. We know that tomorrow and Monday are going to be pretty busy so today is our big “do nothing” day.

Dominica played Abyss much of the morning, she got in more video game time than I did today, I think.

I managed to get in half an hour or so on XCOM which was just barely enough for me to go back over the mission that I did last time and had been unable to save so I now get to, the next time that I play, continue moving forward with something new. I really like that game and am looking forward to how the story unfolds.

Dominica and I played about one third (after having done one third already) of Lost Horizon which I really, really like. We started it last week. It is a truly excellent adventure game. We are both really liking it.

Dominica was exhausted and went off to bed a bit before midnight. Once she went to bed the girls and I spent about an hour, maybe a little less, playing Final Fantasy III. Then, before turning in for the night, we focused on Fairytale Mysteries 2: The Beanstalk and wrapped it up. That was one or two hours more game time but went really well and the girls were really into it and really did a great job following the story and really, at this point, Liesl is able to play this style of game better than I can! So this is another game completed for the Miller family while in Greece. People thought that I was crazy getting the number of games that we did, but the reality is is that when we are playing them going through one or two in a weekend is not hard at all. We go through them very quickly at times.

After we beat the game I got the girls off to bed. I even got them to go to bed in their own bed tonight, a major victory! Except, about half an hour after I got them off to bed they saw a mosquito and were scared after that and made me promise that I would sleep in their room so that they can get to sleep. So I moved my CPAP over and eventually went to bed up there. Dominica was long asleep by even that point so she didn’t really care. She is going to be up early tomorrow, anyway.

Tomorrow is the big Carnival parade in Rethymno which is, I have heard, the big place for it in Greece. It is a huge event there and everyone has told us that we have to go. So we are going. We have to have a parking spot before eleven or won’t be able to get into the city, we have heard. The plan is to be up and moving quite early.

March 11, 2016: Our Travel Plans Are Finalized

Today is Friday and it is really dawning on us now that we are “nearly” done with our time here on Crete. This particular cycle feels like it has really, really flown by even though it is our longest stay yet in any location. This is the first time that we have actually pushed our ninety day visa limits to the very limit. We are carefully planning our exit to get every possible day out of it while not getting quite to the point of being in any danger of accidentally overrunning our stay and getting in trouble for being too long in the Schengen.

We think that we finally have a plan now. We are going to fly from Athens to Bucharest and we got our flights confirmed today. Very relieved that we were able to do that. Now we know exactly when we are leaving. We also decided that we are going to take the overnight ferry from Chania to Athens which is one of those “Greek experiences” that people should have. It is standard to take ferries all over the Greek islands. So we are pretty excited to be doing this one. And the girls are very excited to be doing an overnight ferry. Neither of them can remember when we did our two overnights by train through Europe in 2012 so they are looking forward to this and have already declared that they are getting the top bunk. I am guessing that this will be much easier than sleeping on a train, but we will see.

We booked a hotel in Athens as well. Not a fancy place but it is right across from the Acropolis and we hope to be able to get to see tons of the big stuff while we are there. Two days in Athens is not much at all but it is what it is.

We expect that we will rent a car in Romania and use that to drive from Bucharest up to Transylvania. There is little way to get around without one. Renting a car is always a huge ordeal. So figuring that out is Dominica’s next challenge.

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.

March 9, 2016: Home Made Butter

Today, for Liesl’s school science project, she is making home made butter! This actually came up in her curriculum some time ago but our local corner store has nothing even remotely like cream so we have been unable to start the project at all. Liesl reminds us every day or two that we need to go to a store that has it because she is anxious to make butter at home. Yesterday, when we made the run out to the grocery store in the next town, we were able to get the cream that we needed so today is the day. Thank goodness for those days when the kid is excited about doing school. What a blessing that is.

This was quite a project and really wore out Liesl (and Dominica.) The did a full litre of cream which required splitting it into multiple bottles to shake and boy does it take a lot of shaking to get it to work. This took up much of the morning. But it worked and at the end of it all we had rather a good chunk of butter to put into the fridge and it tasted great. It was very good butter. I’m not saying that this is a worthy process and that we should be making our own butter on a regular basis, but it was effective and as a family that goes through butter with reckless abandon it will not be wasted on us!

I did an ownCloud 9 installation project today. It just released this morning so it was a good day to work on getting it installed and writing up my experience with it.

It turned out to be a busy day of arguing about technical issues with ownCloud to a point where their engineer had to be pulled off of the forums and a call with their management scheduled for tomorrow to talk about the things that were said, the claims made, etc. A rough day for them that should have been an exciting release day.

Tonight, once things settled down, I got some time to game with the girls. We played some more of Final Fantasy III or, as the girls call it, “Luneth”. We played that for a little while but then switched over to a hidden object game Fairytale Mysteries 2: The Beanstalk which both girls did a great job playing. They have really developed the skills for the hidden object games.