A lovely day ... AND clean laundry!!

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Hello!

Today is the day of the general strike in Athens, and we were concerned as to how – if at all – it would impact us. According to BBC World News, all flights into and out of Athens are canceled, and it appears that all public transportation is halted as well. Got up around 6:30 a.m. – nice not to have to use the alarm clock! – and down for breakfast around 8 a.m. Lots of good things available, including some lovely sautéed mushrooms and of course, more Greek cheese! Everything appears normal at the hotel! Packed up our bag of dirty clothes and headed to the laundry…will it be open??? YES!!! No problem at all, and it was promised to be done by 11 a.m.

Got the car out and decided to head west along the coast to Rethimnon (also known as Rethymnon), the third largest city in Crete. Took the coast road – which, literally, is the ONLY road most of the way between Iraklion and Rethymnon!

I will now break that thought to discuss Cretan driving. It is definitely not for the faint of heart, and if one insists on following rules, they will be very unhappy here! Even more so than in Italy, the “rules” of the road are more like guidelines, actually. For instance, they have STOP signs up in various places, like before entering roundabouts or merging on to the freeway. NO ONE stops in either place; it really serves as more of a “warning” that the driver needs to pay attention to something. Very odd! Then, just like in South Africa, most people drive straddling the right hand line on the road. This way, there is enough room for two vehicles, as someone overtaking will come up on the left and pass you, regardless of whether there is a double line, a single line, or no line at all! Quite exciting to see huge buses passing huge trucks – on hills, on turns, on flats -- anywhere. You need to be prepared at all times for traffic coming toward you to need some or all of your lane as well! So! Takes a bit of getting used to, but once you get over the fact that everyone is doing it, you just follow along! Also, there is a national road that basically runs around the island, except for the far west side. There, the road only goes on the north side of the island, and to get to the south coast, you have to take VERY winding mountain roads that apparently take forever – and sometimes just end at the south coast! So, while the island itself isn’t all that big, (260 km long and approximately 50-60 km wide) it can take a long time to get from one place to another.

Now, back to the blog…It took about an hour to get to Rethymnon . It looks to be a VERY big resort area, as we passed some very large complexes. Everything lovely and well kept, and flowers galore! The highways are planted with huge stands of dark pink oleander and are just beautiful! Lots of other colors of flowers as well, including our favorite – some brilliant red poppies every now and again! We drove along the beach at Rethymnon – while it’s still early in the season, people were in the water and sun bathing! Found the archeological museum and the big Venetian fortezza (fortress) were both open. Parked virtually at the museum’s front door, and right outside the main entry of the fortezza. The museum, while small, had some nice pieces in it, from Neolithic finds in the area through the Roman occupation. The fortezza, which was built by the Venetians in the 1590’s to repel the Turks, was basically a shell, with great walls. We were able to go into the church/mosque/church and walk around the walls. Because Crete was ruled for centuries by the Venetians, they built churches. When the Turks came, many of the churches were turned into mosques, and minarets added. When the Turks left, down came many of the minarets, and the mosques were generally converted back to churches again. It is interesting to look at the insides and outside of the buildings, as you can see where Venetian windows were filled in and plastered over. It is interesting that buildings were used in this way.

After this, we were feeling a bit peckish so headed down to a nice spot on the far side of town, right on the water, to get some lunch. Today we ordered two pies – one cheese, and the other spinach, and split them both. Very good lunch with a lovely view!

From there we headed into the central part of town and parked near the civic gardens. Walked into the old Venetian quarter to take in the Venetian Loggia and the Rimondi Fountain. Saw some wonderful Venetian architecture. Town was very busy; everything was open, lots of people out shopping and wandering. Great fun!

From there, we headed to the Internet Café in town, as R had brought Gulliver – our VERY tiny RED Dell computer, in hopes that he would be able to successfully download the Greek maps we needed into Emily (our GPS). Very nice facility – bar out front! And a man to help R get things set up. They did not have wi-fi, but were able to hook him up via cable. It took quite a while to download the program into the computer and then on to Emily, but Robert was able to do it successfully, which will certainly be a help with the rest of our trip! Stopped on our way back to the car for Magnum Classic #3 (I’m REALLY trying to be good here!!)

Easy drive back to Irakleon, once we found the highway… including a stop for gas, and we pulled up to the hotel around 4 p.m. Parked the car and headed over to Perfect Laundry – and voila, CLEAN CLOTHES! I can’t STAND it!!!! Clothes AND gas! How great is that?! One other point I’d like to make about driving. I do NOT read GREEK! In some places, the sign will have both Greek and Latin spellings of places. In other places, the Greek only sign will come first – generally, but not always! – followed by the sign in Latin. At one particular point, we got confused because I did NOT know that Ηρακλειο was, in reality, Irakleon (of course nothing I could understand!) – where we needed to go!! Grrrrrrrr…… [Note from Robert: Only Margaret would growl because the Greeks insist on posting signs in Greek!]

R ordered a half-bottle of wine for the room, which we enjoyed on the balcony, then in for a bit of a nap. Still debating on dinner – I’m favoring returning to our first night’s restaurant, Brillant; R wanting something new…we’ll see!

More later!
Lots of love,
m
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