Category: Honeymoon

After going to bed early the night before, Matt and I woke up around 5:30AM. Matt had taken pictures of the sunrise when we first arrived but we decided to take them once again. I had the video camera and Matt had the SLR and we headed out on our early morning adventure. We had decided that we would try to get the sea with the sunrise behind it. This was a bit more difficult than we thought since our apartment faced the hillside. 

There were more activities early in the morning than I ever would have imagined The cleaning crew was just arriving to work and the gardening crew was hard at work watering the flowers and lawn. We must have looked like idiots walking around the property with our cameras in hand. 

We finally found some good shots by the mini golf course but couldn’t stay long because they were watering the surrounding areas.  The clouds were out in full force, making for some very dramatic pictures.  After the mini golf course, we headed up to the main swimming pool and front office. Matt and I found that a few of the apartments have their own pool, I really wondered how much those must cost. $$$ 

Finally we got back to our apartment and got ready for the day. This meant taking showers, eating a bowl of Golden Grahams, watching CNN (again), and putting on our bathing suits. We had decided that today would be a poolside day.  

The pool was empty when we arrived a little after 10AM, so we got our pick of lounge chairs.  We got out our books and sat for an hour until people began to emerge from their caves.  Around 11 AM Matt was kind enough to go get me a Margarita and he was going to get a tequila sunrise.  (Matt: up at the bar one vacationer from the UK asked me “it’s a bit early, eh?” Fortunately the wife was with me; we’re on holiday, we can drink at 11 AM 🙂 Not to mention we’d already been up for hours). Previously when I had tried to get a Margarita I had ended up with a pizza, since then I had been craving the fruity drink. When Matt got back to the table he had a huge grin and was carrying his tequila sunrise and something in a martini glass, I knew instantly that the martini was my margarita.  The drink really wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be. Matt  said the woman had filled the glass with tequila and he was afraid it would be extremely strong. Lucky for us she used good alcohol so it was a very smooth drink.

As we sat sipping our drinks the pool became more crowded and we realized it was around lunch time. Matt headed back to the apartment to make tortellini’s (what an amazing husband) and I followed shortly after. We rested, out of the sun, for an hour and a half and then went back to the pool, where we remained until around four.

Matt and I knew that there was no internet connection in our apartment so until now we had been sending emails from  an internet cafe in Hersonissos. We decided to ask the front desk if there was an internet connection anywhere in the resort. Happily they informed us that  they had wireless in one room in and all we had to do was buy a card to connect. For only six euro’s we could have two hours of wireless internet and finally update our travel blog. We were ecstatic.

We sat in the room and updated the webpage for an hour and decided to head back to the room. We cooked up some traditional Greek sausages we’d picked up at the supermarket. We don’t know exactly what they were (and hope to find out when we get back), but ewww. They were pretty bland, had a thick casing, and were not especially good. We each ate one and had another half bologna sandwich each. By then it was time for bed.

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.

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.

We woke up around 6 AM. We weren’t sure when reception opened, so we called around 7 to ask if our bags had arrived, which unfortunately they had not. We called the airport and they said one was in, and the other’d be in around 7:30, then both driven to the hotel. We slowly got cleaned up and put on the same old clothes to head up to the breakfast buffet. Fortunately, just as we were about to leave for the buffet, our luggage arrived. Toothpaste, fresh clothes, and deodorant ensued.

The poolside breakfast buffet was an eclectic mix of Greek and American food. The Tomatoes au Gratin were pretty tasty (not for Andrea, who is no friend of the tomato), the eggs with mushrooms were great, and the fruit was very fresh. The pancakes were more like a thin crepe. The “doughnuts” were literally that…a little gob of dough, highly fried with honey dribbled on top. They were really weird. 🙂 The bacon was more like ham…not overly fried and crispy. We tried all kinds of different stuff, but the biggest oddity of all came from the most pedestrian of places: the cereal. They’d run out of the “diet” milk, so I (Matt) used the other one, which turned out to be whole milk. I haven’t really drank much whole milk in my day…I won’t be drinking much whole milk in the rest of my day. It’s so heavy and fatty! It’s like a paste! We bought 1% milk the next day for the fridge in our apartment.

We came back to the room to change into swim suits and headed to the pool. We grabbed a couple chairs, got some sun, and read our books. The water was chillier than we expected, so we sat on the edge this first day; we were still pretty fried from all the traveling. We ordered a beer, Margarita, and pork gyros platter from the poolside bar, but there was a bit of miscommunication and we found ourselves with a beer, a margherita pizza, and pork gyros platter. It was a good margherita pizza! The pork gyros were excellent, too. To make up for the missing drink, I picked up a Long Island iced tea for Andrea, but that was pretty gross. it was the wrong color to start with (looked more like Pepsi), and although it was very strong it seemed to be a mix of unfamiliar alcohol. Now that Andrea thinks about it, it may have been Raki (Greek alcohol from grapes, kinda like Ouzo) rather than rum. We still drank the whole thing. The Alfa lager I had was really good.

This is where it gets pathetic. We went back to the room and I (Matt) passed out again. I (Andrea) sat out on our balcony while Matt slept and read a book. After some time reading I listened to the Zune and watched the sunset. Matt  woke up after dark, around 8:30pm by this time I was beginning to get tired. We decided to finish our leftovers from lunch and watched Happy Gilmore, subtitled in Greek. Which was cool! Matt tried to figure out the Greek translations for the movie. 

We both went to bed around 10pm. Our top priority these first few days in Greece was to relax, to let all the stress and anxiety from the weeks of work and planning the wedding wash away. We certainly accomplished that.

Edmond, our stowaway, snuck out of his hiding place to cuddle up with Andrea. Then he drank himself into a stupor out on the deck, studying up on the Greek Isles. He’s very well read. He hasn’t come out of the apartment since.

20 hours of traveling is surprisingly (not surprisingly) long. Very long. Andrea and I wondered if we’ve ever really been so tired before. Myself (Matt), I’ve been on a plane for about 17 hours in a row, but that was a cake walk in comparison. 20 hours divided between 4 airports, 3 different flights, 2 carriers, and 1 long sprint across Charles De Gaulle (Paris) was truly exhausting. Our first leg took us from Seattle to Paris and kept us in the air for about 10 hours. We had dinner early in the flight, somewhere over Canada (beef…stuff) and breakfast somewhere over the Atlantic, just short of the UK (yogurt, muffin, fruit cup, eggs, OJ).

During the flight we watched Leatherheads (bleh, Andrea: 1.5 stars, Matt: 1.5 stars), Iron Man (Andrea: 3 stars, Matt: 3.5 stars), What Happens in Vegas (Surprisingly, Andrea: 3 stars, Matt: 3 stars), and we didn’t quite get a chance to finish our 4th film (Andrea: Horton Hears a Who, Matt: The Kite Runner). Andrea’s already seen it before, but she’d like to remind everyone she gives Horton a whopping 4.5 stars.

We landed in Paris and ran clear to the other side of the airport, through a passport check and 2 different security checkpoints. The flight from Seattle had come in a bit late, so what should have been an hour and a half layover became 30 minutes to cross CDG. If you’ve never been, it’s a sprawling, massive airport, and we just made it. We got on our plane bound for Athens. Our luggage did not (we didn’t know this yet).

Matt and I arrived at the Athens airport with an hour till our connecting flight. The airport was a complete culture shock; it was dirty, (I saw pee on the floor by one gate), the bathrooms were dirty and had only one stall each, and everything stunk. When we arrived at our gate there was no sign confirming we were in the correct location; after traveling for so many hours my mood was not great and the longer we sat with no information the more worried I became.  Boarding time arrived and finally someone arrived and ushered us onto a bus that took us out to our plane. We were finally on our way to Crete.

The flight from Athens to Crete was extremely short, just 40 minutes long. Our plane landed and unlike Athens the airport was slightly more updated and catered to visitors. Matt and I quickly found the baggage claim and waited for  our  luggage. Matt and I are patient people, but after seeing everyone from our  plane get their luggage and leave, and then the next flight arrived from Warsaw and received their luggage, we knew we had a problem. At the lost and found we discovered our name had been called (but honestly, she was so soft spoken we wouldn’t have known what she was saying anyway). Our bags were still back in Paris. At this point I thought of Amine, and his bitter hatred for Air France, but we remained optimistic. The bags should be coming in around 10 PM that night, or early the next morning at the latest.

We caught a cab for the Village Heights Golf Resort. I still don’t know how much that cab ride SHOULD have been, but based on the fare map near the cab stand, probably somewhere around 28-30 Euros. We paid 35, which isn’t so bad. Such is life; we don’t speak Greek, and our cabbie certainly didn’t know English. I’m just happy he knew where we were going. There isn’t much in the way of addresses or street names in Crete. Hell, the water park we were given a flyer for at the airport has GPS coordinates on it.

The staff at Village Heights was very friendly. Andrea was given a pretty pink rose, and we got into our apartment, 2102. Minutes later they delivered a neat little “Happy Anniversary” card to our room (they didn’t seem to have anything honeymoon related). This card may have been made in Publisher. 🙂 Crete is beautiful, this place is beautiful, we are exhausted, and couldn’t be less interested right now. We went to sleep around 6 PM, hoping our luggage would find its way safely to us while we slept.