We slept in a little more today (still up by 8, though), and had some of the cereal we bought at the supermarket. We watched CNN…again. You see, there are about three channels in English: CNN, another copy of CNN, and Bloomberg, which provides exciting worldwide financial news. CNN, helpfully, has talked about absolutely nothing except Gustav, the Democratic National Convention (until it ended), and Gustav the entire time we’ve been here. We want to write a letter and thank CNN for their miserable programming and plodding repetition of the same story. Oh, I forgot, we get BBC World News, so we get the same stories in less time. 😉
So we got our swim stuff together and a couple of books and took the bus down into Hersonissos again. We wandered up to the beach, which is on the North side of the island (facing the Cretan Sea), and settled on the West side of the Early Christian Basilica. The beach itself is covered with umbrellas and lawn chairs, and to reach it, you walk down a set of steps adjacent to the beachfront restaurants we talked about yesterday. We didn’t know at the time, but for a few Euros you get to sit in the chairs, and the guy that spies out people coming down will offer you an umbrella (hand gestures, no English) and bring you a basin to rinse your feet off (very nice). Again, we didn’t know this, so it was a bit confusing when this guy that’d been hidden around the corner at the base of the stairs started following us around and smiling, pointing to chairs. A woman up in the restaurant area, leaning over the rail, would yell out when new people came down and seemingly indicate when he should go pick up basins and umbrellas. We admit, it took away from the “let’s go relax at the beach” atmosphere a bit, but we had fun nonetheless.
We read our books, got some sun, and each took our first swims in the Mediterranean. The Cretan Sea is very salty, comfortably warm, and the shoreline is covered with broad, flat rocks, each of which is covered with smaller rocks and sea plants. This makes for awkward footing, so you kind of stumble your way out into the water for about 20 feet, then the rocks fall away and you’re floating around in the waves. It was very relaxing, and I (Matt) used some of this time to practice treading water for my upcoming scuba classes (back in Seattle, getting ready for Hawaii next year). Treading water is EXTRA easy when it’s so salty. 🙂 There were a lot of topless women at the beach, of all ages. Andrea’s thought about it, but has not yet. I myself have been, because I’m a boy person. Such double standards… Making your way back into the beach, the riptide is surprisingly strong, and the rocks are still nice and slick, so you slowly make your way back, trying to look as coordinated as possible, but usually failing and stumbling again. We watched a girl catch a few facefuls of white water, another flip over on her raft, and realized we weren’t alone.
We left the beach to get lunch and stopped at a beachfront restaurant called “G Captain.” While we’ve been eating mainly Greek food to this point, we went for a cheeseburger with fries, a Mai Tai and a Mythos beer. The cheeseburger was on a big potato roll, the cheese was gouda, and the meat itself was a pork patty. It was surprisingly good, although Andrea was surprised by the mushy texture of the meat. It was a great lunch, the staff was friendly, and we once again had to wait awhile trying to figure out how to flag down our bill. People really leave you alone, don’t rush you through meals, which is great. The only trouble’s been sometimes we can’t find them when we’re finally ready to move on. No worries; we’re not in a hurry, we’re on our honeymoon.
We caught the 4:45 bus back to the hotel and passed out around 6. We promised we’d relax on this leg of the trip…we’re getting very good at it. 🙂 The sun and the salt water really sap the energy out of you. Plus, on Crete places open a little later (more like 10:30 – 11 AM) and close down early (around 4 – 5), so we’ve adjusted.
matt & andrea 