Lost in Greece: Home Sweet Home

i had a fit of something last night, woke up shiver, nobody knows what that was all about, but the two of us woke up for real, and Julia asked me to go get her a coffee, per usual. Down stairs I went, the knees didn’t really feel that bad considering all the walking we did the 2 days before. I walked up to the bar and our good friend Nektarious was there with a hug and a smile. It’s a shame that George is no longer at the hotel, but Nekatrious is a champ as well. I asked him for two double iced americanos and took them up to JW who was apparently ready to go. We have 2 apartments we’ve looking at today, sorry for the surprise, we’re not buying today, we have just been looking at online ads too long, we wanted to see them in the flesh. So one at 10 the other at 4, which gives us plenty of time to relax, walk around the city we love, and apparently someone JW knows was in chaina 3 days ago and left 5 golf tees throughout the city for us to find, with some cryptic clues. Now I’m not one to pass up a challenge, so we added to the days itinerary.

Since it was so late we decided to walk to the first apartment viewing, it was roughly 1000 meters from the Porto, which gave us some good site seeing opportunities. Except after you get out of old town Chanda, all there is are apartments and apartments and more of them.

The walk stretched us both out and JW wanted to go to a bakery she”d heard about, Red Jane. We found it easily, I thought their selection was atypical of your average Greek bakery, but the options were amazing, and the two things we had were pretty fucking awesome. JW had her second coffee at this point.

We reached the pin drop the realtor sent us and there was nothing there. We would not be denied, we walked around the entire block. Once we made it back to where we started and I got a message on my WhatsApp about where we were and I said here, and guy jumped out of a car. Manos was a typical Greek man, and he happily showed us this 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom flat on the 3rd floor of a 4 story building. There was an elevator, it was typical tiny elevator. The apartment itself was empty, and the floors were smooth stone, the bedrooms were very tiny, and the balcony had zero view. We loved Manos, he was a hoot, and as we have discovered throughout our many trips, when Greeks struggle to find an American work for something, and we shout of words like catch phrase. Anyways, this place wasn’t bad, for the price it seemed excessive and being a 15 minute walk to downtown was nice.

We left Manos and jumped back on the scavenger hunt train. Rolling through the super touristy area and made our way to the big church in the center. We spent at least 20 minutes looking for a golf tee hidden in the square before we gave up. We’ll try again tomorrow

We head back to the Porto and there were so many people, it was crazy. Nektarious was waiting and seemed a bit busy, so we went up to the room and fleshed up before heading out for lunch at our favorite place Kouzina EPE. The food was excellent and we loved their new space with lots of outdoor seating. At one point a horse drawn carriage drove by and the horse took a dump right in front of us.

Classy.

After lunch we went back to the Porto, where no Nekarious was in a frenzy with all the tourists, so we shared our first Raki of the trip with him and went to get our stuff as we had an adventure planned for the afternoon.

Hopping in the car we headed west towards Kissamos. Our destination was the Charma brewery which was kinda out in the country, but a much better experience than Lekkada brewer the last trip. I missed a turn and were cruising through the hills of Crete before I realized we’d gone too far and flipped a UUUU and headed the right way.

We showed up at Charma brewery as a busload of fucking Germans were finishing up. But they did clear out and we got a sampler flight and a wonder new tshirt for me. The beer was fine, but the Dunkel was pretty damn good. It’s too bad the only version available in the city of the lager. I had a great conversation with our server about music and how I want to start a recording studio on Crete. He thought that was a great idea, and I sure as fuck wouldn’t be charging 65 dollars an hour like the studios in Kansas City are charging these days.

We were in a hurry to leave and paid our bill and rushed back out on the tiny road back to the highway and through the busiest road in the world before we arrived at the second apartment we were seeing today. The people who owned it still lived there and the little old lady who owned it followed us around religiously to show us anything the realitor might have missed. It was 1 and 1/2 bath, elevvator to the 1/2 floor but then 3 steps down, because it was 2 building joined in the middle, with a 1/2 floor in between. The balcony view nearly sold it for me, viewing out to the Aegean. 3 bedrooms again, incredibly tiny, the 1/2 bathroom was a toilet and a sink. I loved the place and it was also only 15 minute walk from downtown. The expense seemed irrelevant. We were not buying today.

We headed back to the Porto and Nektarious had left for the day, so we met the evening staff and I can’t remember any of their names.

We took a nap.

We woke up and headed down the promenade thinking about the scavenger hunt, looking here and there and back again. Nothing was up and nothing was down. We eventually made it to the well of the Turk for dinner. It was fantastic.

We headed straight to Rudi’s taphouse and talked with him and his wife and all kids of stuff. Their Belgian beer selection is unparreled outside of Belgium and they are great people. At once point I told them my name was Kinder, and Rudi’s suddenly exclaimed, you’re the kinder who always posts on my facebook page! I said yes, we met year ago and again ever 2 years after. He’s old and old people forget.