Crete

As you have probaby seen from the pictures, we did not see many "pretty" parts of Greece. Our cruise didn't stop at some of the more scenic places like Santorini or Mykonos. Obviously I knew that when we booked, but I guess I didn't think it would make that much of a difference. It did! I think we probably missed an opportunity to "go scenic" in Corfu. In the other places, I would not have wanted to give up seeing the historical sights to see something more scenic. So, Crete was our last opportunity to see pretty Greece, and I was not going to let it slip by.

I'm standing funny in this pic because I didn't want the waves to get me while I was posing for the picture and not watching. They DID get Mike. Ha!











In a Greece book we had borrowed, I found a beach that I wanted to take a taxi to. We asked the taxi driver to take us to Vai, and he said it was 3 hours away. Boo! So I told him that I didn't care where we went, I just wanted to see something pretty. He took us out of the city to a place called Aghia-Pelagia. It was a very small beach, but I guess it mostly satisfied my need to put my feet in the water at a beach in Greece. We snapped a few pictures, and got back in the taxi.
He asked us if we wanted to see citrus groves or olive grove. I said citrus, so he took us to a town called Fodele. It happened to be the birth place of El Greco-the famous painter. Again, we took a few pics, got in the cab, and went back to town.

Our first stop in town was the tomb of Zorba the Greek. I don't much about who that is, but apparently he's big stuff to the Greeks, and people of Crete especially. He and his wife are buried here. I think legend says that Zeus was born on the island of Crete. The taxi driver said his profile could be seen in the mountain. Next, we went to an old church. The smaller one, the driver said was 700 years old. The bigger was was built to accomodate the increasing size of the city.
Then we went to the market/shopping area and picked up a few goodies. We got some olive oil. At every stop, the people claimed to have the best olive oil, but the driver said Cretan (?) olive oil won second place in big olive oil competition, so that sounded impressive. This was Lion square where we enjoye some ice cream. I am forever sampling ice cream and coffee nearly every where we go. :)











This was a meat market we passed. Yuck.

Had to get a video of the beach.



I took this video over our balcony. Pretty cool huh?



And that is officially the end of our cruise pictures. Whew! Saturday we spent the day with friends in Aviano and then flew home. Mike's car died on the way home Saturday night and we had to call the Staffords (friends who kept the boys) to drive an hour out into the woods at 1 am to come and rescue us. The boys were a bit groggy when we picked them up, but on the way home, every time I would turn around to savor their precious faces, Jonas would give me a big grin from behind his pacifier.