Sheep Guarding Llama

We slept until after noon today.  I woke up with bronchitis.  Just great.  This is going to make for a very rough week.

I got up and got right to work posting and getting SGL caught up.  Don’t want to get behind now that we are in Europe again.  I’ve already gotten all of the European stuff updated and am only catching up with the holidays in Texas since yesterday so all of the stuff in Crete is detailed and quite accurate as it is being done on the spot.  Texas I am doing my best to catch up.

Dominica went for the living room gaming rig this morning after having completed three whole games yesterday and started playing the super casual clicker title Among the Heavens.

When she went to take a shower, I switched into the gaming seat and got in maybe an hour playing Fallout 3.  The game froze on me many times and made in nearly impossible to play so I eventually gave up.  I have too much work to do anyway and I was spending more time at the kitchen table on Dominica’s laptop than playing the game anyway.

Today’s big project, besides normal posting, was getting SGL completely caught up and I managed to make it, too, which feels great.  There has been so much to write about for the past week that it really needed to be done now and could not wait and has been hanging over me so I wanted to get that done today.  Now dad is going to be busy reading this for days!  These are some very long posts.  And, at his request, there are pictures on most of the posts as well.

The video game rig was engaged for the entire day.  Almost none of which was from me.  I got to play maybe half an hour late in the evening, but that was all for me.  Liesl and Luciana took over and used it nearly all day.

At one point Dominica and Liesl were both sitting next to each other on the downstairs couch playing games on the Fires, it was adorable.  Liesl and Luciana are really loving their new Fires and do not seem to miss having access to their iPads at all, which is so awesome because the Fires are so much lighter.

Speaking of which, the shipment of the laptop that was too big to bring with us and the three iPads that we are not bringing with us all made it to dad’s house today.

I spent the majority of the day drinking tea and running to the bathroom to blow my nose.  This sinus and bronchial infection is really kicking my butt.  I was tired after being awake only eight hours!

Dominica and I made a small run to the corner shop today, just a few basic supplies before they closed for the day.    They were already out of bread so we need to find more tomorrow.  It is a very small shop and our variety is going to be exhausted very, very quickly.  Dominica is beginning to research ways to make things out of lentils.  I have been hoping that she would learn to make homemade veggie burgers for years so maybe this will be what pushes her over the edge.  I like the fresh made ones so much more than the store ones.  And they are healthier, too.

Dominica made vegetable and pasta star soup for dinner.  Luciana did not get up until six this afternoon (yes, really six!!) Just in time to have a little time awake and then join us for dinner. She finally caved after a night with no food and she ate last night’s lentil stew that she had refused all night to eat.  Then she ate the soup.  It took a lot of work but we made good progress today.

I showed Liesl the new game The Secret of the Magic Crystals which is a bizarre horse raising game amount a meteor that fell to earth, turned into magic crystals and turned horses into unicorns or something of that nature.  It was a deal that I found on Steam sometime in December and had set up for her but no one had actually played yet.  She loved it and played for three and a half hours today!!  Luciana played some Minecraft this evening on Dominica’s laptop, too.

Later on Luciana decided to try Castaway Paradise which I had shown to the girls when we were in Nicaragua but Liesl had not been interested and Luciana was curious but had mostly overlooked it.  This time they were both hooked.  Luciana played for almost two hours while Liesl watched.  Then, just before bed time, Liesl got to play for about half an hour as well.  This game is great because it is made for kids but forces Liesl to read everything on the screen for both her and for Ciana so she gets a lot of reading practice in while they play.

The jet lag continues to plague us.  I am not sure that it is getting any better.  Our schedules are so skewed.  It is much like it was in Spain, again.

I have forgotten to mention, thus far, what a disaster it has been that we do not have enough North American to European power adapters.  First of all, we simply do not own enough of them.  Secondly, all but two that we own are two prong, not three prong, and that is a problem in and of itself. Thirdly, only half of our adapters came with us and only one of the three prong ones.  So right now we can only plug in the gaming rig, my work laptop or the projector at one time.  That is a bit of a problem.  And of the two prong adapters that are here there are not nearly enough to handle charging all of the Kindle Fires, iPhones and other things that need to be plugged in every day.  So everything is on a rotation and things are not getting charged when they need to be.

We got the girls off to bed around four.  Not much of a victory.  It is such a struggle when you get up so late.  We are attempting to adjust our sleep schedules but it is not working well at all, especially with me being sick and needing any sleep that I can get.

Tonight Luciana decided that she wanted to sleep with Dominica and me because Liesl has been sleeping with us and she has not.  Liesl was very sad because she hates sleeping alone.  She wasn’t upset that Luciana got to sleep with us, only that she was then alone.  So I set her up with a bed of blankets on the floor next to me and now both girls are very happy.

Dominica and I were up with alarms at nine this morning.  That was a bit of a struggle.  The jet lag is still kicking our butts.  It was painful trying to get out of bed at that time.  Dominica ran around the house cleaning for at least half an hour because the owner, who is also the architect, of the house was coming at ten to look into the issues with the boiler after we were unable to figure out how to get the radiators working from the discussion on the phone yesterday.

He arrived at ten.  He is a local, retired architect.  We got the history of the house.  He bought it hoping to move here but after he was done with the house his wife did not want to live the city which is not far away.  He modified the house to make his son, who had met us to let us into the house the other day, want to live in the house in the hopes of getting two votes for moving but his son went off to university in England and now that he has recently graduated has moved to Athens and is not going to live on the island.  So this likely means that we are the closest thing to someone actually living in the house, ever.  That’s weird.

After spending an hour or more working on the radiators and then on the boiler the owner finally gave up and called for a mechanic to come and look at it all.  So he left for a few hours while he waited for the mechanic to come.

I relaxed this morning.  Played some HexCells Infinite and then Fallout 3.

Dominica and I ran to the corner store to return the plate that was lent to us yesterday and picked up some trash bags while we were there.  So glad to have a corner store a few feet away again.  We have certainly missed that!

It was early when the mechanic came and got the boiler fixed.  We were very glad that it was not us being clueless Americans and not being able to figure out how the radiators worked.  When even the owner did not know how they worked we felt much better.

Dominica ended up napping for much of the afternoon getting in at least two hours on the couch downstairs.  While she was napping I did some posting on MangoLassi and simultaneously played a little more of Fallout 3.  I have been away from posting for several days and am very behind.  Trying to get caught up a little bit.  I need to get caught up on SGL, too.

The girls slept until five. Five in the evening!  The jet lag is very severe.  Not only did we travel eight time zones but it was a very exhausting process.  Put all together it is really messing with everyone.

I set the girls up to play games in the living room and I moved to the kitchen to use Dominica’s laptop to really get work done.  Luciana used the gaming rig to play Minecraft for a little bit but then gave up and moved to her Kindle Fire and Dominica took over so that she could play Castle, the hidden object game that dad completed the other day.

I have a really rough sinus infection today.  I’ve had it the last couple of days but all of the walking yesterday made it hard to notice as that kind of activity and being out in the rain and humidity all day made it feel pretty decent.  Today being inside all day and being mostly sedentary it is really awful.

Dominica made a lentil stew for dinner that we had with the whole wheat bread that I bought yesterday.  It was good.  Liesl ate a little of it.  Luciana refused and got no dinner.

I worked all evening.  Dominica completed Castle and then went on to play twenty minutes of Escape the Museum but was not into it so she moved on to Sharpe Investigations: Death on the Seine.

Dominica ended up beating that game too and then went on to play the Runaway Express Mystery which was much longer and kept her playing until after four in the morning, but she finished that one, too!  Three games down in a single day. People wonder why we have so many games, this is why.  Once Dominica gets going, she eats through games like crazy.  And the girls play lots of them at once and are making progress on several themselves.  Liesl started playing Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two yesterday and is liking it.  She will be through that in no time, I am sure.  Luciana is very much into her princess games, Goat Simulator and Minecraft.

We had huge Luciana eating issues today.  She kept asking for food and then refusing to eat it.  This went on for hours.  She got in all kinds of trouble and ended up spending easily an hour sitting at the dining room table staring at lentils that she refused to eat.  This is after sitting with the family during dinner and refusing to try anything.  She ended up going to bed losing all of her toys, having to sleep alone, no food and looking forward to tomorrow being a day of sitting at the dining room table staring at lentils again.  Liesl is good about trying food and eating what she requests.  It would not be so bad if Ciana was picky but would at least eat the things that she asks for, but she does not even do that.  She often asks for food and then won’t touch it.  We have to break her of that.

Dominica got me up around nine thirty this morning.  My job today is to get suited up and hike the nine kilometres that it takes to get from our little village to the city where the car rental place that we were told about is located.  It was getting close to noon when I finally was ready and actually set out to begin my long walk.  The girls were still very, very asleep when I set out.  They are not adjusting to Eastern European Time in any way at this point.

It was cold today but not as bitterly cold as yesterday.  Very overcast, though.

I started walking north.  Thankfully the road to take is super simple.  We live on the road that turns into the main road of Rethymno (Google calls it Rethimno incorrectly, and the real name is Ρεθύμνης according to the city’s official page.)  From Prines the next village is only about two kilometers, if that.  That was very fast.  I was there in a matter of minutes.  I found two markets very quickly but the only ATM was all the way on the far side of the village so it took me a while to get there.  I stopped in the first market just to look around and see what there was so that I would be prepared for later.  At the ATM I loaded up on cash.  This was the emergency “must do” task of the day.  No matter what else there had to be cash or we had no means of getting groceries of any sort and we are very close to being out of food at this point.  There is almost nothing to eat.

It started to drizzle by the time that I was at the very first village.  It is going to be a very wet day.

The next village was quite close again.  More markets and bakeries.  Lots of little businesses and tight streets.  Each village was down the hill towards the shore.

After the second village I had a bit of open walking as I came into highway intersections and needed to walk on the E75 which turned into the city’s main drag.  I got to see a lot of the city coming in this way.  I have a pretty good idea of what the downtown area is like.

By this time it was a light rain.  I had a light fleece and my baseball cap but nothing else.

On the east (the far) side of downtown I turned north to go into the old town.  I am so glad that I did this.  There was a lot to see.  This is one of those awesome, ancient European cities with a very old part of town to wander and get lost in on a sort of peninsula sort of thing to the north of the main city.  It was a really gorgeous walk and I hope to be able to bring the family down here to do some exploring soon.  Lots of neat stuff around every corner.  I even stumbled on the shop that made the loukoumi in Athens!  I had read the box and knew that it was made on Crete (after I had bought it) but that I stumbled on the actual shop that made it on my first time out was pretty surprising.  And that I recognized the name walking past it on a tiny little back street in the Rethymno old town too!

I popped out at the top end of the marina on the east side of the peninsula only knowing that the car rental place was supposed to be along the marina somewhere.  This ended up working out really well because I got to walk the entire “strip” along the waterfront where all of the restaurants and high end shops are.  It was hopping, even for a Sunday afternoon in the rain with it being pretty cold.  The restaurants were very busy and there were people everywhere.

I finally got through the line of restaurants and found the car rental place, Greenways.  But when I checked the door, it was locked!  Oh no!  Nine kilometres of walking and I really wanted a car in which to drive back home.  There was a number on the door but I tried calling it and just got an automated message in Greek that I could not understand in any way.  I was texting Dominica and sent her a picture of the phone number on the door and somehow she manage to get a hold of someone and found out that the person who was supposed to be managing this branch today was out sick and since they usually go all day without getting any customers at all they were leaving it closed.  Since I had walked in, someone drove in to meet me there.

I ended up renting a rough shape but serviceable (thus far) Kia Picanto in blue for $900 total for the next three months.  That’s pretty cheap for an all inclusive car with unlimited kilometres (there is only so far to be driving on the island), insurance, taxes and everything.  We were pretty happy with that.

The car was out of gas when I got into it so I had to fill up on the way out of town.  I stopped at a BP but it was closed. This was a little scary, I don’t know enough of the area to be driving around looking for petrol stations on my first time driving in the country and my first time driving this kind of car (which, by the way, is insanely difficult to drive and literally painful because of the long throw clutch) and not knowing the area at all.  This could be very bad, very quickly.  Thankfully the next, and only other, BP station was open and I got the car fueled up.  Crete (and maybe all of Greece) is a “they pump it for you” country, unlike Spain.  You have to get used to this in every country.

The drive back home was quick and easy.  It was still raining but not hard.  It was nearly four when I got back to the house and parked by the church down the street.  I had meant to stop at the nearest of the larger markets on the way back but I did not see it and was nearly to the house at that point so just went home before going back out to find food.

Dominica and I tried walking down to the two markets in Prines and found both of them closed!  Uh oh.  Not good, we have no food.  I jumped in the car and drove through the next two towns and all of the markets were closed so I went all the way to the outskirts of Rethymno to go to the big German Lidl store there and… yes it too, was closed.  This is bad.

I texted Dominica that as I was heading to the Lidl that I had seen someone come out of the corner store and told her to run down there and see if they were open now.  So she dashed down there and I raced up to Violi Charaki where I had seen a high end bakery and pastry shop still open as I drove by.  Thankfully they were still open and I ran in and got two loaves of bread that looked amazing.  Dominica texted me that she had gotten into the corner store and needed me there right away as she had no money.  So I dashed out and up through Atsipopoulo to Prines and ran in to shop with Dominica.  I made great time.

We got to talk to the owners of the shop a little bit.  They asked about us as they had seen us two days in a row now and there are very few people in Prines.  We said that we were going to be living here, and just behind the market, for the next three months.  They were very excited and welcomed us as the new villagers.  The wife of the owner ran back and made us a plate of Christmas cookies and New Year’s Cake for us to take home, too!  Everyone here is so nice.  We are loving Greece for sure.

We went home with eighty Euros of groceries and are no longer in a panic.  We have enough food so that Dominica can do basic cooking, at the very least.  And we have a car and money now, as well.  Now we can relax.

I was starving by this point.  No food, whatsoever, for me today and a lot of walking done.  Liesl was awake but Luciana was not up yet!  The jet lag has really gotten her.

Dominica made tortellini for dinner and we had butter on some of the amazing bread that I had found.  After dinner we just relaxed.  I have a terrible sinus infection that has really caught up with me today and I am very under the weather.  All four of us bundled into the living room and we played video games all evening.  I finally got a chance to play a bit of Fallout 3.

Dominica reached out to the people from whom we are renting the house about the radiators that have not been working.  They walked us through how to use the radiators and kept telling us that we just needed to flip a switch and that no tools were needed and we could just not figure out how this could be.  Dominica even watched a lot of YouTube videos to try to figure this out but no luck.

We tried an experiment this evening in Dominica going to bed around two and me offering to sleep in the girls’ room if they would go to bed early.  The girls said that they were excited and would go to bed early.  Luciana was especially keen on the plan.  But once we had to go to bed around three and they had to actually try to fall asleep it ended up in arguing and a fight and Luciana stormed out and tried to sleep with Dominica then tried to sleep on the couch downstairs and eventually kicked me out and the girls slept in the loft and I went back to my own bed.  They ended up staying up for many hours which is a real problem.  They are going to sleep through tomorrow again.

Dominica and I have to be up at nine tomorrow because the owner of the house is coming by to look at the radiators.

After all of those trials and tribulations we are very, very thankful and somewhat incredulous that this morning, well really this afternoon, we are waking up in our new home on Crete in the village of Prines.  It was three o’clock when we finally got out of bed.  We really, really needed the sleep.  Thirteen hours of sleep for me!  Unfortunately anytime that I sleep that long, because of the CPAP, it is basically guaranteed that the stress on my sinus will result in a sinus infection and I feel a little under the weather today.

We woke up to the sound of a phone ringing.  But it is an ancient Greek rotary phone and the sound was nothing that I expected to hear from a phone.  It rang a lot before we figured out what it was.  I ran down to the office and answered it.  It was Sofia (after whom Villa Sofia is named), she wanted to know if they could stop by around four to give us a tour of the house.

So everyone was up, dressed and roughly cleaned up around four.  Sofia and her son, who had let us in last night, came by and gave us the grand tour, walked us through everything that they could.  It turns out that Sofia has lived in New York and has actually been to Perry, of all places!

My first order of business was to go down to the middle of town and look for supplies.  We have a few Euros but very little money and need a few basics like bread and toilet paper.  I went to the corner store right next to us and it appeared to be closed.  So I walked on and found another tinier store that was open and I was able to get a very super basic things like the toilet paper (the only pack that they had there!) and a loaf of bread.  We were pretty desperate.

I came home and we just ate bread with oil for dinner.  The girls ate leftover snacks from the flight bag.  We are operating pretty lean today.

After we ate Dominica and the girls came down with me and we found the closer market, the one right below the house, open so we stopped in and got a few more basics.  Luciana was so excited that there were Kinder Joy (the local name for the Kinder Suprise eggs) here.  So we let the girls each get one eating up the bulk of our remaining cash.

So the first order of business was for me to walk to the next down, Atsipopoulo, where there is supposed to be an ATM and a bigger market.  I set out walking and made it maybe a kilometre at most before I decided that I had to turn around.  The road was very narrow, traffic was surprisingly heavy and it was pitch dark so that I could not see the road at all and absolutely no driver could see me on the road.  It was incredibly dangerous to the point where I risked just falling off of the road and would almost certainly be clipped by a car.  There were no shoulders and often houses, fences or walls right against the road so there was no way to even step off of the road for safety like I normally do.  This would not work at all.  Back home I went.

We hooked up the video game rig tonight and got it working and played some video games before turning in for the night.  Our day was spent almost entirely in the dark having slept so much.  We can’t wait to get over the jet lag and hopefully tomorrow we will have money and maybe even a car.

The radiators upstairs are not working.  It is very cold up there.  The main floor has radiant floor heat which is amazing with the tiles.  So comfortable.  But the heat does not reach the second floor at all.

Tonight Liesl decided to sleep upstairs in the loft but Luciana decided to sleep down on the couch in the living room.  Ciana is so weird.

We did not have the luxury of sleeping in this morning even though we were so exhausted.  We had to be on the nine o’clock shuttle from the hotel to the airport and that meant being awake around eight, getting the troops ready, everything packed up and out the door and down to the lobby well before nine.

We actually did an amazing job and were down in the lobby quite quickly.  Everyone was really dragging, but we were moving along well.  Dominica checked out and I staged the luggage that we had by the security scanner (it is common in many countries to have metal detectors at the entrance to finer hotels now.)  While we were waiting the girl who was working the front door looked at our unhappy Luciana and took her over to see the Christmas gingerbread house display and was picking up the Santa figurines and stuff to show to her.  That helped a little.  Then she took her over and let her pick out Christmas cookies for her and Liesl.  That made her a very happy Ciana.

We got on the nine o’clock shuttle and were off to the airport which was only five minutes away.  And thus began the next, long ordeal of our trip.

Once at the airport we were right through security, that was easy, and off to wait for our flight, which was for noon.  Because of all of the issues and because it is an international flight we wanted to be there with plenty of extra time to be sure that nothing could go wrong.  Our gate was not announced for a few hours so we started the day by going to a restaurant near one of the announcement boards and having a nice, long breakfast on the inside of security in the terminal where we could relax.

Dominica had French toast which Luciana finally tried and actually really liked after a year of her telling us that she would not like it.  Argh.  Liesl ordered a plate of eggs which she liked very much.  I got the “Ege Tost” or Aegean Toast which was a grilled vegetarian sandwich which was very good.

A young woman sitting at the table behind us who had touched Luciana’s hair as she walked by (everyone loves kids in Turkey) came over to the table to give Kinder chocolates to the girls and to coo over them a little.  She was very sweet and it made the girls very happy.  Everyone has been so nice in Turkey.  When she and her husband went to leave while we were still there she came over and blessed the girls quickly before they left.

We sat for a long time as our gate was never listed.  But the restaurant filled up so we moved on and found that gate 213 has almost no one at it so the girls set up camp there and played for a long time while I kept checking with announcement boards, watching Google and FlightStats and walking all over the airport looking for supplies.  Our flight was initially delayed for one hour but just before it would have been time to board it was delayed another fifty minutes.

We had been able to reschedule our Aegean flight but our window was rapidly closing with these delays and we could easily miss it, again.  My stress level was getting higher.

At around the time we would need to board our flight Google and FlightStats showed our gate as being 201, but the “official” boards never showed this.  I kept waiting for info until it was really too late to make the stated flight.  Once the emergency time had passed they finally announced gate 307 so we, like many other people, raced to gate 307 – only to find a gate worker who knew nothing whatsoever about our flight and was trying to arrange people for a flight to Moscow!  Our flight time came and went with the official status online and on the boards still being that the flight was “already past time” and at gate 307.  Ridiculous.  The crowd at the gate was huge and they were completely unable to get anyone official or with information to come to the gate but no one could go off in search of more information because their flight might board and leave without notice as we had no info at all.  The only thing that we had was the fact that there were hundreds of us gathered at the same gate, looking for the same info, stuck together.

Finally, long after we were supposed to have flown according to the official boards, someone yelled that we were moved to gate 304 and boarding and we all ran to 304 and yes, we really boarded the plane!  Absolute insanity.  No one ever apologized or explained what had happened. It was a total mess and we have no idea how we would have made the flights if we had not all been talking together and I don’t have any idea how that one person figured out that we needed to go to 304.

Once on the plane, and thankfully this one had air working unlike the Boeing 777 that lack air, we sat at the gate for a while, then drove around the tarmac for an hour, then arrived back at the gate for some time.  We never found out what happened but we sat at the gate for quite a long time.  Eventually the plane did manage to take off but our delays just extended more and more with them never announcing most of them.  The board never said longer than 110 minutes of delays but the actual delays were something like four and a half hours!

Once in the air the flight went really well.  It varies between one hour and one and a half hours between Istanbul and Athens.  After the long flight yesterday, this seemed like it didn’t even happen.  There was barely time to feed us, but they did.  Turkish Air does have great meal service.  And the girls got goody bags that were really neat with blow up airplanes, airplane binoculars and activity books.  Air Turkey does an awesome job in the air even if their airport service is extremely problematic.

We landed in Athens without any problem.  We stepped out into the airport and, surprise surprise, almost no one got their luggage.  So few people got it, in fact, that no one was even sure if the luggage had been brought out.  So everyone just stood around the belts until long after they had turned them off and stopped delivering baggage because it was as if they had not even started yet.  We had five pieces of luggage and not one had come out.  Everyone that we had been talking to did not get their luggage either.

Eventually Dominica and the girls camped out by the luggage belts in case it started up again as we had no information and I went to find the lost luggage center so that I could look into having someone look for our bags.

The tough part here was that when we landed there was time for us to make our Aegean flight to Chania.  It was going to be cutting it close and an incredible race but we could have just made the flight.  But because of the luggage not being there for us we missed the flight and missed it dramatically.  Dominica tried to change the Aegean flight times but because we had been delayed on the tarmac and in the air rather than with information when we needed it, our window for changing the flight had closed and we were unable to do that.  This just got worse and worse.

The luggage line was hours long.  I was lucky to be in the front hour of the line but it easily stretched for two or three hours behind me.  It was insane.  After an hour or so they announced that they actually did have peoples’ luggage and just had not sent it out on the belt.  We were less than happy.  They were letting people with different seat classes budge the line for lost luggage and they had been intentionally withholding out luggage.  The Athens ground service had chosen to have us miss our flight and had hidden the information that we needed from us.  Not happy, at all.

It took easily another forty five minutes until we actually had our luggage.  From there we ran through customs and out to the ticketing agents and explained to Aegean what had happened with their partner’s flight (it was a conumbered Turkish / Aegean flight operated by Air Turkey but we had booked the flights separately) and they were awesome.  The charged us the eighty Euro rebooking fee but that was way better than making us buy completely new tickets and they put us on the nine o’clock flight, the last flight of the day, out to Chania on Crete.  We had to rush but they said that we would have no problem making it.  From this point on, everything went smoothly.  Aegean was awesome and really made an effort to make everything work. And no luggage weight issues or count issues or carry on issues either.  Aegean rocked this flight for us.

We raced through check in, dropped off our luggage, got through security, got to the gate and had a few minutes for the girls to go back with me to look at a snack stand for some last minute treats for the flight.  Luciana wanted chips.  And I found some loukoumi or Greek Delight made by Greek Horizons that looked awesome, so I grabbed some.  We got back to the gate and got on the plane almost right away.  We ended up getting the entire front row for me and the girls and Dominica got a seat right behind us with no one beside her.  It was perfect.

The flight took off straight away, no issues.  They came around immediately with New Year’s Cakes (that is a big tradition in this part of the world) and champagne for everyone.  It was really nice.  They even came up and asked Luciana, as the youngest passenger, at least up front, to pick the lucky person from the passenger list.  Ciana was very shy.  They could not do the coin in the cake like you normally do so did this instead.  I did not hear what they gave away to the winner.

Luciana had to use the potty and since it was an airplane it got to be me that went and helped her.  Dominica was very happy that it happened here.

The flight was so fast that they barely had time to hand out the cake before we landed!  It was maybe fifty minutes in the air, total.  So fast.  We flew into Chania and were off the plane quickly and down to collect our luggage.

All of our luggage came right out, this time.  No issues at all.  And the luggage handlers here actually stopped by to make sure that everything was okay and that nothing was missing when I sat down with the girls for a minute while Dominica was in the rest room.  Talk about going out of their way to take care of us!

We were out into the airport in no time.  This was all super fast.  We stepped out to the panic that no taxis were visible and it looked like all of the car rental places had closed!  Oh no!

We found a Hertz that was still open for just two more minutes.  He had a car for us but not one big enough to hold all of our luggage.  This could be a disaster.

I ran outside again and managed to find a taxi.  I talked to him and he said that we would fit so we hauled all of our luggage over to him and for half an hour he tried to figure out how to cram all of our luggage into his car.  Eventually he got a friend to help him and they ended up using a bungie cord to hold the trunk lid closed with our luggage spilling out.

It was ninety Euros and about an hour to Prines.  We were so glad to be out of airports and off of airplanes and on our way to our new home that we did not care at all.  It was completely dark so we got to see nothing of Crete, sadly.  Our original plan had been to arrive in daylight and get to see an hour of the island before getting to our home.  Oh well.

The son of the home owners was waiting by the side of the road and watched us drive by.  He texted Dominica and we figured out from that where to go.  We parked by the church and unloaded all of our luggage by the side of the road, I paid the cab driver and he was off.  Dominica got the kids up to the house while I worked on getting the luggage staged into an alley.

It took a couple trips to get all of our luggage up to the house and the one really weak and ugly larger bag had its handle not survive the trip.  I don’t think that it can even go on from Crete with us, it will need to be replaced while we are still here.

Finally, around eleven thirty we were into the house!  It was by the skin of our teeth but we made it into the house, the Villa Sofia, on the same day that we had originally planned and the first day of the new year.  It is a good omen, we are getting the new year started in our new home in a new land.  We are very excited.

We got a quick tour of the house.  It is absolutely gorgeous.  Jaw dropping gorgeous.  It is even better than the pictures had shown and we can’t even see much of it because it is dark out and the patio and terrace and all of the views cannot be seen.  Everything in the house is perfect and brand new.  It turns out that no one has ever lived here and all of the work was very recent.  It rarely gets rented in the winter so it had been all closed up although they had come and gotten it all prepared for us.  We are going to love this house.

There is a bedroom with two single beds downstairs that we suspect that we are going to regear as a video gaming room with the projector once we get settled in.  The girls found the bedroom with a second floor loft that they are super excited about sleeping in.  There is a master that is perfect for Dominica and me.  There is a bathroom on the first floor and one on the ground floor.  The terrace is between the first and second floors.  The patio is, of course, on the ground.  The pool is empty as it is very cold, no way that we will be using that.  There is an out building with the boiler and other utility items.  We have a full laundry room, too.  Outside there is a wood fired adobe oven.  We have a wood burning fireplace in the living room, too.  The house has a single HD television in the living room, not huge but perfect for hooking up the Amazon Fire TV and we will use it for watching shows and light gaming on that.  All of the appliances are super high end Stainless steal and wood panel in exactly the wood finish that I love.  Everything in the house is light tile, marble and glass.  I love it.  There is even an office loft for me that overlooks the living room!  The giant stone arch in the middle of the living room and dining area is amazing and obviously original (Ottoman Occupation era.)  Even at night the house is brightly lit which is awesome after we have been stuck in so many places with nearly no light leaving us useless after dark.

We hooked up the Amazon Fire TV and watched a little of Liesl’s new favourite movie Transylvania 2 that Dominica had bought for this trip for her.  The Internet connection worked well and is much faster than we are used to, even in the States.

We did not watch for long.  We were just excited to be able to sit down, have Internet tested out, see the Fire TV working in Greece and relax.  We called it a night very quickly getting to bed not long after midnight.  We are completely exhausted and ready to collapse.