So, as I ended the last blog by saying, we flew to Chania at 9PM. The most notable part of the airport experience was a gyro place in B gates that had chicken and pork roasting on those glorious vertical spits that we all know and love.

We flew in an Aegean Airlines A320-200 on the shortest commercial flight I’ve ever taken, which clocked in at 25 minutes from wheels up to wheels down. After we taxied to the terminal, I noticed something very interesting. This interesting thing was the complete lack of any jet bridges. The ground crew brought up stairs for the front and the back for the passengers to deplane. The airport was clean, and basically empty apart from our flight. That airport experience will stick with me for a while as one of the more unique.

After I grabbed my bag, I headed to the Hertz counter to give them all my money and get arrested rent a car. They gave us a blue Hyundai Kona with a manual gearbox. I feel just a tad foolish because I loudly proclaimed that I was one of those “few Americans that know how to drive a manual.” Funny enough, the first thing I did when I attempted to drive the car was stall it. Whoops.

We headed out of the airport very carefully following the speed limit. Almost immediately a Cretan came roaring out of the darkness and, figuratively speaking, latched onto the hind end of my precious rental SUV. When this happened, I vaguely remembered reading about the lack of rule-following individuals present on Crete. We putt-putted along at speeds ranging from 30km/h to a blistering 75km/h into Chania town. Once in Chania, we wended our way back into the pedestrian streets very carefully. At one stop sign, I began to cross the road and a car blasted past on the road I was trying to cross. He nailed his brakes and rolled down the window. I don’t know if he yelled anything at me; I was mostly just thankful that a wreck had been avoided. The perspective on that story is mine, and it should be noted that the driver may have had a lack of carefulness while crossing a certain street. This would never be related in such a story by me, however.

The last corner before our hotel was a tight one. A greater man than I could have made the left turn onto our hotel’s street like a champ, but I instead very carefully executed an approximately seven-point turnabout. I felt like a fool, but eventually managed to maneuver the front end of my vehicle onto the narrow street. The owner of the hotel met me and told me I was going to park where his motorcycle was parked. With the help of the owner and Trevor, I skillfully guided the car into its final resting place for the evening on the side of the street.

He showed us to our room, a nice triple-bed room—for which, by the way, we reserved 129€ (including the breakfast, which, at the time of writing this paragraph, I have not yet had [see below for the outcome of this]). The other guys wanted to just go to sleep or just hang out in the room, but I wanted to go out and walk around or do something. After a while, I finally got up the courage to head downstairs. I asked the owner if I could get some kind of light snack, and he offered me some pork. It was some delicious grilled pork, I will admit. After this, I conversed with the people in the bar portion a bit. The owner wanted to ply me with some beer, but I refused—hopefully with courtesy. I’ve read that maybe Cretans will take offense if one does not consume their alcohol, especially the drink called raki (raki is a Turkish word. The Greek name for it is tsikoudia). Now, raki is a very strong drink made with grapes, with about 40-60% ABV. I read elsewhere that one can politely refuse with no harm done. I hope that’s the case, because I refused the raki.

After eating my light snack, I thought, “ah, let me walk around Chania and find a mini mart.” This was not a wise plan. For my general audience, I will withhold some of the story. For one thing, the mini marts were all closed at 12AM. OF COURSE THEY WERE. As I was looking for a mini mart, I noticed a man walking briskly up behind me. He then wanted me to “come with him” somewhere and I refused. After this he muttered something and walked off. This quite put me on edge and I eventually meandered back to the hotel, fearing all the way.

I did not realize this, but apparently Chania has a strong American presence due to a naval base there. On Thursday, the locals kept asking me if I was “navy.” I told them I was a tourist, but I’m not sure they believed me.

Anyway, after writing part of this travel blog, and the previous one, I went to sleep at about 3AM.

The following morning, I awoke to two dogs viciously barking at one another. It was still pitch dark, and I wished viciously to myself that they would shut up so I could go back to sleep. After angrily wishing the dogs’ untimely demises, I finally looked at my phone. The numbers I saw numbed me into shock: 11:13. Surely this wasn’t right, it was still pitch dark, absolutely pitch dark. The other guys were still sleeping, so I woke them and informed them of what time my phone said it was. At this point, I was still suffering from the sin of unbelief. Weston looked at his phone. It was the same time as mine, so I went downstairs and talked with the owner. Since breakfast was already over, we paid 105€ for the room and headed down to the water to get some breakfast.

It was interesting to note that these restaurants on the water had people to accost us so that they might reel us in as though we were fish on a line. This is an interesting point because our Athens tour guide told us that most touristy places would do that in an attempt to reel tourists in. He had related to us a story about the most aggressive “salesman” he had encountered. When he was in Istanbul touring, a man was literally jumping over tables and chairs, walking through other restaurants’ seating in an attempt to convince him to eat at his restaurant. So now, every time I see owners or employees accosting passers by, I will conclude that they must be “touristy.”

Trevor got some kind of fancy bass fish plate, which, when he received it, he promptly removed all the fancy vegetables since he doesn’t want to be big and strong like people who eat their vegetables or something. Weston got stuffed cuttlefish, which I think he found somewhat delectable. I tried some of it, and it was similar to grilled squid in texture. I got eggs, pork, and slightly toasted supermarket white bread. Yum. After our meal, we got complimentary raki and dessert. We consumed all the dessert. We, however, did not consume all the raki.

After that, we went back to the car and re-parked it in a larger, more car-friendly street. We walked around the old port a bit, and then walked along the sea wall. After that, we noticed that Crete had something akin to mountains, so we decided to ease ourselves slowly in that direction in our horseless carriage (with a sweet manual gearbox)

Our destination in the mountains was a church a little under an hour away. Once we got out of Chania, we were pretty stoked to be seeing some rural scenery. We headed up onto the first ridge and oohed and aahed over the amazing views of Chania. Then as we headed down into the valley between the two mountain ridges, we oohed and aahed over the amazing views of the valley. After wending through the valley on the roads which were much smoother than we expected, we started drifting lightly upwards once again. After a while we came to a gate where the road turned to gravel. Since I had set the goal that morning of making a snowball, I found some snow beside the road, formed a little ball of snow and threw it in Trevor’s general direction. He claims I missed, but I’m pretty sure I got a headshot. We drove through the mountains some more, looking for the snow which we could so plainly see on the heights. Unfortunately, the two roads we drove to access the snow were gated off when they turned to gravel.

On the second road which we navigated to access the snow, we suddenly came upon a small Fiat hatchback parked on the road, and a lady standing there on the road. I was just about ready to pass through, when I decided I should probably talk to her. I think I said “Hello” and she let forth a stream of Greek. I tried to use my Google Translate so that she could talk into the mic, but it wasn’t working. So, I caught one word she was saying “próvata” I typed that into Google Translate, and I found out that it meant “sheep.” Ok, so now we knew it had something to do with sheep. Next she pointed at the road, and I got another word, “dromo” I typed that into Google Translate, and I found out that it meant “road.” So now I knew that there was something happening with sheep involving the road. I understood that we needed to wait, so I put the car in park and waited. Pretty soon, along came a group of sheep, running toward us. The lady guided them into a pen. Several more groups came running up, and ran into the sheepfold. The last group was followed by the farmer in his truck. Once he went past, she motioned that we could continue up the road. We stopped to talk a bit with the shepherd, and it turned out that he could speak some English. A simple greeting was exchanged, and we continued on our way.

After another kilometer or two, we came upon the gate. We did not open the gate, but instead turned around and headed back the way we had come. We passed back through the village and the farm and headed towards our Airbnb in Rethymno. This trip was uneventful, but we did stop at a Lidl and buy some junk food. After all, what is a bachelor pad without lots of junk food?

Tonight, we ate at Italian Corner, which seemed to me to have average food. We received a complimentary dessert after asking for the check. We walked downtown and attempted to go to a couple of ice cream places. After walking around some more, we did encounter a frozen yoghurt place. However, after making the lady behind the counter hopeful that we would buy some, we walked away. After that we made our way back along the beach towards our apartment. That’s about all the interesting stuff that I seem to remember happening today.

Maybe some more descriptions of Crete, and perhaps Athens, would be in order as well. The main characteristic of Greek cities seems to be narrow streets with basically no parking, and no room to drive a vehicle. In my opinion, this lack of parking minimums is absolutely fantastic. Everything is infinitely more walkable than in the US, and people don’t judge you for walking around town in Europe like they do in the US. I mean, you must have to be homeless or weird to walk anywhere, right? Just imagine what your average US town would be like without all the parking lots.

There are a lot more brick-paved streets in these Greek cities than in America, which I’m guessing is mostly due to their age. Or maybe it’s just because America is obsessed with cars. And parking lots.

Look, I’m sorry, there are some things I get slightly riled up about, and they tend to seep into my writing. Let’s try this again.

Trevor commented that Crete reminded him a lot of Central America. I would tend to second that with the limited experience I have of Central America. The first time I was in Athens, in 2020, I had a nagging feeling that I had seen a city like it before. I finally concluded (hopefully correctly) that it reminded me of Guatemala City. I will note, however, that this time that impression was not as string. I also had the opportunity in 2020 to walk around the island of Aegina and received the same impression there. Chania and Rethymno reminded me a lot of Morales, Guatemala with the narrow streets and building styles. Another thing about Greece that reminds me of Guatemala has been, you might say, the quality of the plumbing.

Some of the mountains we explored south of Chania reminded me of Oroville, California area just a bit. The rocks, the color of the dirt, and the olive trees all added to the effect. There are a lot of olive trees in this region of the island. I also noticed some extremely gnarled trees, which I concluded must be ancient orchards. Further up towards the snow, there was a younger-looking orchard on terraces. I think its interesting they still bother to do something like that nowadays.

As far as old architecture and ruins go, this place is loaded with ancient ruins and old buildings. The port towns of Piraeus, Chania, and Rethymno all have old Venetian port architecture. Not to mention that Athens is loaded with excavated ruins. We also came upon excavated ruins walking around Chania. Another thing I remember from my walk around Aegina was the ruins of a temple to Apollo just hanging out on a cliff overlooking the sea.

So, that about wraps it up for my impressions so far. Despite my own initial expectations, I’ve been having a lot of fun writing up this blog. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it.

I plan to be writing more tomorrow.