Honeymoon In Greece

On our trip to Greece we had one stop in Frankfurt on our route. The first flight was delayed in SFO by 30 minutes. Lizy thought it might cause us to miss our connection, but I felt confident that we’d still make it. It was only a 30 minute delay and I knew that other people on our plane were making the same connection as us. I assured her, her fears were misplaced....

This will be a shorter post as I didn’t have time to take notes for this day, so I’m mostly reconstructing the day from photos and memories. We started off the day by walking to the hotel Lizy parents had lived when they were refugees in Greece. It has been renovated since they stayed there and now was a boutique hotel of some sort. I’ve posted a photo oof Lizy standing outside the hotel and the doorway from the hotel’s lobby to the outdoor patio....

On our second day in Athens, we went to see the Acropolis. The Acropolis is a hill in the centre of Athens, which was the centre of religious life during the Greek classical period. Most of the buildings that can still be seen date from between 450 BC and 400 BC. There were building on the Acropolis prior to 450 BC, however, all these buildings were leveled during the Persian occupation of Athens around the year 450 BC....

At started the day by walking to the city building where Lizy’s parents got married. It was a little bit of struggle explaining to the security guard why we wanted to see the building. He ended up letting us inside to see the exhibition of photos on the lobby level. We never said that, but I guess he was instructed to let people in to see the photos. The entrance lobby was very formal....

I had booked the car rental for 8am, but when I woke up I knew there was no way we would make it. I wondered if I should call the rental place. I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal, but I decided to call anyways. When I told the man on the phone we’d be late, he sounded visibly upset. He said they didn’t have a lot of room in the city centre and the car had been ready for eight....

We both slept well. We woke up to someone from the hotel delivering our breakfast. We ate on our balcony overlooking the sea. We took our laundry to the front desk to see about getting it laundered, while we were out for the day. Lizy started explaining all the rules for her laundry. These need to be separated, these need to be hung up, and these … The man at the front desk began to look more and more worried....

In the morning we went swimming again. We swam a little further than the evening before. In the light of the morning we could see many fish swimming among the rocks. The water was a little rough. We swam north along the shore towards the rocky public beaches. The bottom was very uneven with rocky hills. I had to look down so I could make sure I wouldn’t hit one of the rocks with my hand as I pulled through the stroke....

First I’ll describe our hotel a bit. We stayed at a hotel called Pension Marianna. The parking for the hotel was on the street on a road halfway up a hill to an old Venetian fortress behind the hotel. To get into the hotel from the parking one had to walk down a narrow road, that we assumed was a pedestrian road when we first walked down, but later we saw small motorcycles....

After breakfast we had to pack up our belongings then we were on our way. But before we left Nafplion, we decided to drive up to the fortress of Padimili to look around. Padimili was built by the Venetians during their occupation of the area in the 17th century. It was not enough to stave off a Turkish invasion and the Ottomans recaptured Nafplion from the Venetians in 1715. The Turks operated Padimili Fortress until it was taken by the Greek resistance forces during the Greek War of Independence (1822)....

After breakfast we got the car and drove south to Sfakia, a region of Crete on its southern coast. The road hugged the north coast then veered south. We drove through a small village and the roads became narrow. There were a few pick up trucks and it became difficult to get through the village. Once we were past the village the road became windy. To the east was a cliff that plunged into the Vikos Gorge and to the west was the White Mountains Range....

We walked around the historic downtown and harbour areas of Chania. The architecture of Chania is dominated by a Venetian influence. The Venetians ruled Crete from the 13th to 17th century, until the Ottomans took control of the island. Most of the fortifications around the harbour were built during the Venetian period. In the harbour area cars were not allowed and most of the historic houses and been turned into shops or restaurants....

In the morning Lizy and I walked to the parking lot where we had left our car the previous night. I had dropped off the car by myself the night before and so led the way. I got a little lost on the way there and stumbled upon a museum of ancient Greek technology. It looked like they had a lot of cool devices in the museum, so I convinced Lizy that we should stop for a while in the museum....

We woke up early to wolf down some breakfast, before heading to the ferry. I got into the taxi, while still eating a barley rusk. I had been expecting the ferry to be a small boat, with everyone kind of huddled on the top, but when we got there we found out that the boat was gigantic. The port was a chaotic scene with tour buses unloading, people queuing in multiple lines, and masses shuffling onto the boat....

In the morning, while we were eating breakfast at the hotel restaurant, a man from the car rental company met us to give us our rental car for the day. I walked with him up the street to where the car was parked. On the way to the car he told me his name was Dionysos. “Like the god of wine,” I replied. “Yes.” “You must be trouble.” “No. I don’t even drink....

We had to wake up early to catch the bus for our boat excursion. We had to eat breakfast at the hotel very fast, and I was unable to finish my boiled eggs, so I took them with me in my pocket. We were able to catch the bus no problem, which took us back to the new port at the souther part of the island where we had first arrived via the ferry....