I (Matt) woke up again around 6 AM. I didn’t want to wake Andrea, so I took some videos of the sunrise. It’s a beautiful island, Crete. Andrea woke up not too much later, and we made our way to the first shuttle into Hersonissos. Our hotel is about 8 minutes from town, and they run a shuttle about every hour and a half. The first shuttle was at 9:45, and we quickly discovered the town doesn’t wake up that early. 🙂 Much of our early strolls through town found shopkeepers hosing down front steps, unlocking gates, and generally setting up shop.
We walked down what appeared to be the main street (none of these are marked), window shopping at various souvenir stores. One standout was a wood carving store that included dragons, Pinnochio, Mickey Mouse, and 3 wrestling dinosaurs (super awesome). We’ve included some pictures so you can see what we’re talking about. We also saw stores with knockoff designer watches, clothing, and glasses. We passed some internet cafes, and cafes with Wi-Fi, so we knew we’d finally be able to get a message home (my cell phone wasn’t finding an applicable network, and there’s no internet available in the room).
We wandered down towards the beach. All along the beachfront drive there are restaurants and bars that have both a storefront and beachfront section; in other words, you can either go into the air conditioned main building or sit on the open air beach side. There’s gotta be a good nightlife in this area; there were a whole bunch of bars along the strip that vary from Irish pubs and rock clubs to disco bars. One of our favorites was Club Tiger Club, which sat above Disco Bar Tiger Disco Bar. OK, yes, it’s all one club called “Tiger,” but we’re very literal sometimes and really enjoyed this interpretation of their signage. Club Tiger Club is probably an amazing place to party, if you were 21 or 22. Seriously, we saw inside while they were cleaning up and it’s a sticky, dark, dirty mess of a club. For those that went to Illinois, this is like Kams. For those that didn’t, it’s like that sticky, dark, dirty bar you knew of in college.
We followed the road down to a little ruin that turned out to be an early Christian Basilica. We climbed on the old broken stone steps, then out onto the rocks jutting into the Cretan Sea. It’s an amazing sight, and a beautiful view of the city. The water’s really salty, of course, so all the little eddies in the rock face had crystallized salt pools. We took some pictures and shot some of our first video.
We wandered back into town (Andrea found a shoe store, although she didn’t buy any 🙂 The American dollar sucks), and made our way back to the supermarket near the bus pickup. We bought a bunch of groceries for our apartment, including milk, juice, chips, pasta, sauce, lunchmeat, bread, and cereal. I also bought Andrea these little Happy Hippo cookies she was eyeing in the store (Andrea: they were tasty!).
Back at the resort, we took a little nap that stretched till just before our dinner reservation at Elia, the fancier restaurant at the resort for Matt’s birthday dinner (there don’t seem to be any real super fancy restaurants around Hersonissos, at least not that we’ve found). In case you’re wondering, we were celebrating on the 30th because it was still the 29th back in the states, and we were more awake on the 30th. The food was actually pretty good, and we started it off with a bottle of wine (Vin de Crete, 2006, abstractly “white,” which best I can tell was a Pinot Gris) and a bowl of potato salad. This was not potato salad like we are familiar with (or expected). It was literally chunks of potato with slices of tomato, slices of green pepper, slices of onion, slices of cucumber, and olives. Everything was very fresh, and it was a good starter (although a bit filling). Andrea had the grilled kingprawns (heads and all), and Matt had the grilled swordfish (bones and all).
The server finished the meal for us with Raki (as Andrea has come to call “Icky”). That’s powerful stuff; neither one of us was able to pound it down.
There was a magic show/fire dance poolside, but we weren’t interested in the straight jacket escape set to loud Greek pop music, so we headed back to the room. It was a great day, and I can’t think of a better place to celebrate my 30th birthday, nor a better person than my wife, Andrea. 🙂 We’re still getting used to that idea.
matt & andrea 