A Week on Crete (1)

We arrived on Crete on a Sunday afternoon (20 Sep) by way of an Aegean airlines flight from Athens. That same day we had flown from Milan to Athens on an Emirates flight. The previous day we traveled by train from Venezia station in Venice, about a two hour trip through picturesque countryside. It surprised me how rural it was along the train line with small farms and vineyards and villages then larger towns with some factories and industrial facilities then straight back to farms. It was an express train that sped through most towns and stopped at a few of the larger ones. I find train travel interesting

We had a two hour wait at Venezia for our train. It was warm and I had a good conversation with a young Chinese couple. They had been friends since their early school days and they were both now studying in Europe, he in Munich and she in France, and they met up on their holidays for a trip to Italy. They each spoke German and French and their English was good. They said they were assured of a good well paid job when they returned to China with their qualifications.

Their were a few beggars on the platform, in particular a small haggard middle aged man in grubby clothes with a pronounced limp made impact on me, and I gave him some coins. A young lady approached me also soon after and I did not give her anything, she looked quite fit and well fed and seemed to be working with the man, I assumed them to be father and daughter. A train came in and most of the crowd on the platform got on, Lib and I being very observant of the numbering on the carriages as to where they were along the platform so we knew where to be with our luggage when our train came as we had a first class ticket with a carriage number. Shortly after the train left I saw the beggar I gave to walking briskly down the platform and wave to his daughter on the next platform. He had no limp and was puffing away on a fag. He no longer needed the pretense of the limp as he has thought all the people he'd approached had left on the train. Live and learn hey, the bugger conned me.

The terrain in the distance became more mountainous as we came closer to Milan. At the stop before Milan a middle aged couple boarded, the man wearing a Melbourne Football Club T shirt. He said he used to live in Brighton but they lived in Sydney now and he was a Swannies supporter mainly. They'd been staying for a week at one of the lakes not far from Milan which were popular tourist resorts.

We were knocked over by the size and magnificence of the Milan railway station. It was ornate and quite a work of art and I have been intending following up to learn of it's history but have not yet done this. Our hotel was not far from the station about a 20 minute walk but it took us an hour as we we walked around looking for it and ended up asking locals directions three times before we found it.

We went out walking in the evening and had dinner at a restaurant some ten minutes from our hotel. We enjoyed Sicilian wine with the excellent meal. It was one of those where you select your meat from a display and the chef prepares it and cooks where you can watch it happen.We talked to a man on an adjacent table, Henry from San Francisco, a most polite man who worked for Roche Pharmaceutical. He's a biologist/chemist and was in Milan from I think Switzerland where he's based to meet a colleague on a business trip. She had not yet arrived. He said he one day wanted to come to Australia to see the Tennis Open. When we told him our son Rob had an honours degree in Biotechnology but had been unable to get employment in that field, he said he could probably get work in San Francisco and the pay is excellent but living costs eg rent are through the roof. He has since emailed us and I have told him if he ever comes to Melbourne for the tennis I'll pick him up at the airport and we'll put him up but he'd have to bus and train into the tennis each day.

Our transfer from the hotel to airport was 7am, it was low traffic it being Sunday morning. The van driver was doing 145kph on the freeway to the airport as we came closer closer to the snow capped mountains of the Alps. I noticed nobody used indicators and just changed lanes as if they did not exist. It was a spectacular fly out. We had a wait of a couple hours in Athens and it was exciting to be in the air again flying out over the Mediterranean and some other islands on our way to Crete. After 35 mins in the air we landed about 4pm at Heraklion.

The airport was busy and crowded and after we eventually got our luggage from the carousel we went out to the Hertz car rental booth to get our hire car. The lady at the desk was all business, hardly showing the slightest smile through her heavy make up. She had long hair and was quite a picture of glamour. She tried to sell us insurance to cover the excess on the policy we had taken, as Mary our travel agent had warned me she would. Mary said our travel insurance covered that. Declining the extra insurance and hoping for the best that we would not have an accident, I did not endear myself to the Hertz lady who had an air of "Ive seen it all but people don't listen."  She said to pick up the car you cross the road and look for the Hertz signs. We went out into the dusty and busy road outside the terminal and crossed into a mass of buses, walked further, the wrong way I add, dragging our suitcases, and eventually back tracked and crossed another road where there were yellow Hertz flags. We found the guy and he gave us the keys to the car, asking "Have you been to Crete before?"  When I said no he laughed long and hearty, then added reassuringly, "You'll be OK." I told him the town we needed to get to for our accom and he gave us rough directions. We took off in our manual Ford Focus with me trying to concentrate to stay on the right side of the road and change gears with my right hand. I have to tell you honestly I was very toey. We got on the major National road as directed but had missed the turn the man told us and went ten k's the wrong way until the turn off was obviously not there. We backtracked after some difficulty getting off the freeway and back on to go the other way. This time again measuring on the odometer and going back past the airport the other way we found the turn off and exited. It was about 6pm and I really did not want to be driving around looking for our villa in the dark.

We followed the sign that said Tyllisos and came to the village after about 10 minutes. I was mindful that it was Sunday again and AF days were to follow so I was very keen to find somewhere I could buy a bottle of wine. There was a taverna in Tyllisos village where several men were drinking out front so we stopped and one of them spoke enough English to understand that I was wanting to buy a bottle of red wine. He talked to a lady who was in charge of the bar and they reached up very high and brought down a bottle. It cost 5 Euros. The man who spoke English gave us directions how to get to Estate Kares and we found the turn off down a little gravel road. It wound its way through olive groves for about a kilometre, in places it was very rough and concentration was needed to stop the car bottoming out with dreadful noise. Are we really in the right place we kept asking each other? We arrived at the villas and walked to the reception. The place looked deserted. The views were spectacular into a deep valley of olive trees with mountains behind and Heraklion in the distance and the sea to the north east. During our week there we never ceased to be enthralled by the vista.

A man, the owner Emanuelle, was watching television and eating his evening meal. He did not speak good English but shortly a lady came who did, Georgina her name as she introduced herself. This reception area was also the bar and dining area and she responded to my request for a cold beer with two icy glasses from the freezer and two cans of Mythos beer which she said were on the house. She said she had been expecting us and asked would we like her to cook us dinner, a traditional Cretan meal she was sure we would enjoy. We accepted and she showed us to our villa which was spacious and comfortable. She left and we showered and were preparing to go back to the dining room when she knocked on the door an asked would we like her to bring the meal to our villa as we must be tired. Yes please we said. The meal was a couple of chops each, Lib thought they were goat, and generous amount of fried potato chips. No salad which we would have enjoyed, but we wolfed it down with the wine I had bought which was excellent. There were numerous cats hanging around and I made the mistake of feeding them the scraps and bones which of course led to them coming back nightly.We slept very well. We had said we would have the breakfast in the dining area the next morning.

Our Cretan adventure was underway.