Before I begin the trip report, I’ll give one or so cultural differences I’ve noticed between Greece and America. People still smoke in restaurants and food establishments here. Not everyone, but a few people. Tonight when we were feasting on pastries at the airport, I noticed that the bar where we were had ashtrays. I also noticed at the restaurant we ate earlier tonight that people were helping themselves to cigarettes and e-cigarettes inside the restaurant. I don’t really mind this. In fact, if you ignore the smell, it doesn’t stink.

Another small thing I’ve noticed is that you have to ask for the check at restaurants here in Greece. I think that could be a good thing. What’s the first thing you want to do after you’ve been given the check? You want to leave. You’ve seen this written on other blogs before, and you’ll see it here again. People in Greece/Europe just don’t rush their food. It seems to me that it’s rude to do anything to rush people along in their eating or socializing experience at your restaurant. Oh well, let’s wolf our food down to move on to the next thing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as American as the next guy, and I love to eat my food quickly and move on.

Speaking of restaurants, I’ve mentioned two or three times that the restaurants bring complimentary dessert at the end of meals. I think most restaurants we ate at served us complimentary alcohol and dessert. I read on TripAdvisor that a restaurant will go out of business here if they don’t serve a complimentary dessert.

Today (Sunday) we began the first part of our trek back across the Earth. I finally have mostly gotten over the jet lag. I woke up at a decent hour this morning without an alarm. We explored Argyroupoulis this morning. We headed down the hill to the waterfall area and walked around the area there. Once again, we saw some snow on distant and inaccessible mountain peaks. After bumming around there a bit, we headed back up the hill to the house. After heading up the very very steep hill to the house, we somehow split up and I headed up another very steep hill to bistro_cafe. I got some breakfast food, and the other guys got coffees. After sitting around for a while the other guys started complaining loudly that they wanted to find another coffee shop in Chania before our flight. Since I had the keys, they had to sit where I wanted them to sit. After a good bit of complaining, they gave in and bought some apple cake.

After lounging around like I wanted, we headed out to the airport. I wended my way rapidly through the Cretan countryside. I am currently expecting that I’ll be getting a speeding ticket or ten in the mail. Once again, the views did not disappoint.

Previously, Trevor had decided he wanted to submit an upgrade bid at the minimum, which was 30€ per person. While sitting at the coffee shop we had discovered that he and I were sitting in row 2. So that was great. Weston was not on our reservation so he stayed in the back, which I think he was mostly okay with. Trevor and I got a little snack on the plane as a comfort for the money spent. After we landed, we had to bus to the terminal. We found out that business class gets their own bus!

Once we got to the terminal, I wanted to see if we could get all of us into the lounge on our business class tickets plus my travel perks. Since we bussed to the terminal, we came in on the bottom floor of the terminal. We went up an escalator, and there was no way to get through to the terminal except through some glass doors with tempting handles on them. I pulled on one; it opened, and an alarm went off! Whoops. So, we headed back down the stairs, and I used my brain this time. We found an escalator up to the main departure gates. Sadly, Athens did not have an arrivals lounge, so no luck there. Oh well.

We had decided previously to stay at the Athens airport hotel, since we’re leaving at 7:05a tomorrow morning on SWISS to Zurich. We headed out to the hotel, checked into our rooms, and then grabbed a taxi to Artemida, a town on the eastern side of the peninsula where Athens is located. Weston and Trevor both had it in their heart of hearts that they WERE going to swim in the Mediterranean before they left. We got dropped off at a beach, and they proceeded to swim in the Mediterranean for about 5 minutes. I noticed a local taking a video of them, and I told him that I thought they were crazy. I also told him they were my friends, so I think that made the first comment okay. After this, we walked down to a place that our taxi driver had recommended to us. The place was packed. When we got there, the live music was pounding, but fortunately it lapsed into the blissful normal restaurant volume.

The other guys had gone swimming about 1mi north of the place we ate, so we walked along the beach most of the way. We had noticed in Rethymno (of word salad fame) that it looked like they were doing dirt work, or maybe more accurately sand work, all along the beach. Most of the beach there seemed to be quite rocky. The beach in Artemida was different, with sand stretching out into the water instead of immediately giving way to rocks like the beach in Rethymno. The beach in Artemida seemed to be popular with the locals, with some people walking the beach, and others parking their cars and, I assume, watching the colors in the east as the sun set.

What we ate at the restaurant was some kind of fried eggplant with feta cheese and some other sort of cheese melted on top. I apologize deeply to Greece for this comparison, but it was basically eggplant lasagna. We then ate some kind of shrimp with feta cheese in sauce similar to pasta sauce. It didn’t taste terrible at all. In fact, it was pretty delicious. We then got a whole sea bass grilled somehow. Our waiter brought the fish out to our table and made a show of preparing the fish in front of us (after it was cooked of course. He removed the spine and as many of the bones as he could. It was interesting to watch, at least.

After that, we got our ride back to the airport and sat in silence pretty much the whole way. I saw 120km/h (75mph) at one point on the speedometer. I’m not sure the driver was supposed to be driving that fast there. He also blasted through a stop sign at 40-50km/h (25-30mph). That was fun.

We hung out in the lobby restaurant for 30 minutes and got some coffee drinks. I also ordered a fancy-schmancy dessert that I didn’t need.

After that chill time in the lobby, we decided to go grab a pastry or three. One of those Veneti Cafes is outside the airport on the departures level and is open 24/7. Since our hotel is right across from the airport terminal, we walked over there in about a minute. I got some baklava, Trevor got some thing with ham and cheese, and Weston got something else with chocolate in it or something. After that we walked around the pre-security portion of the airport for about half an hour. It reminded me of the Messenger of Truth article that was supposedly written in the 1950s about youth going to airports on Sunday afternoons to hang out.

Tomorrow, we’re hoping to head to Zurich for a couple hours on our layover. I expect the blog post to be rather short, and then my travel blogging career will come to a rather abrupt halt.