Climb climb, climb the goddamn stairs

We woke up late, or latish for us, julia had a hangover and I didn’t so there was a lot of that for about an hour and then she went back to the room and I walked around a bit before returning to the Porto for breakfast.

It was the most nothing we’ve ever done in Greece and I kinda liked it.

Shortly after breakfast JW showed up and we went for a drive, west on the coastal road which was in construction and in a pitiful shape.  Eventually we came to a sign for a Minoan tomb, so we headed up a beautiful white painted road and a parking lot, which we thought was odd and took some Picts of the to tholos

We wondered why there was such a large parking lot for such a tiny Cretan tomb, when we noticed on the sign that it was uncovered during WWII.  I immediately put 2 and. 2 together because below us was the airport at Malame, one of the most important places on the island during the Battle of Crete during WWII. We noticed that road continued up past the parking lot and it was there that we discovered what the enormous parking lot was for.  It was a goddam nazi cemetery.  Fuck that.  I am stil amazed such a thing exists in a country that was literally masaqured by the nazis.  That’s some hardcore Christian turn the of Cheka indeed.

From the nazi cemetery I suggested we head to georgeolpoli for lunch, 20 minutes on the east side of Chanda, maybe 30 min. From our present location on the highway.  We zoomed out and I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and we wound up high up on the hilltop village of Argo fuck yourself.  Quickly realizing my mistake, I told the JW machine I’d save her, and up and over the hill and down the twisting switchback we went and then arrived back on the highway, a mere 4 minutes away from the exit to georgeopolis and the home of this supercool church oh some rocks.

To be honest, I’d seen the church on a Greece video some 10 years before and always wondered where it was and eventually realized it was this time town between Chanda and Rethymno, and lo and behold, here it was.  We walked out of the very uneven and scary rocks to the church.  It was frightening, and slippery, and we nearly died, but eventually made it across and took a couple pictures and then walked back.  We had a nice lunch at the sunlight cafe.

Then we decided to try a hike suggested by super George at the Porto.  I had the name of a monetary in my gps and up the ountain we went.  When we got there it was a nice quote place, but soon we heard noises and then there were children, and omg, NO.

To be honest, I have no idea what the place was called, but there were 3 paths at the parking that went in different directions.  The first path took us across a small bridge and up to a cave with a church inside it.

The second path took us up about 9 million stairs to a cave that had a church in it.

The third path, took us past the newer monestary, around a hill to the road with another parking lot on it.  Here we saw the video crew from our hotel.  Odd place to see them.  The vide below looked down over the plains and in the distance the city of Chanda, it was amazing.  The sign pointed up the hill even further to a Minoan city on top of the hill, but after another 155 minutes of hiking we found that really all that remained was a wall, on top of the highest hill in the area, so basically, a useless wall on a very poorly defended hill.

After the hike we headed back to the Porto, and went out to eat at The Well of the Turk.