A Week on Crete (7)

I need to finish this for my own peace of mind, although it is well and truly old news by now.Our last full day on Crete was Saturday. We planned not to travel far so as to rest up so we decided to go shopping in the tourist strip at Amoudra beach near Ghazi in the morning, as Lib wanted to buy a few clothes and souvenirs to take home, and lunch again at Liguria Beach where we had enjoyed ourselves so much previously.

It was an overcast day, warm with the odd brief light rain shower. It was quite a tourist area where we parked the car with resort buildings and apartment blocks and all manner of shops restaurants and bars. Lib shopped while I walked up and down the street with one eye on the car to ensure we didn't get booked. There were 'No Parking' signs along the side where I parked but these seemed to be ignored by one and all. A shopkeeper told me we would be OK there, the parking rules were not enforced, but if we had been in Heraklion proper they would have been all over us quickly.

It was a pleasant couple of hours we spent there. You do get the feel of a place by shopping and talking to the shop owners. Those we talked to spoke reasonable English and more than one had relatives in Australia and knew that smoking in public places was not permitted there, which they said would be very hard for them. So many Greek people smoked cigarettes it was alarming. One said she knew the standard of living was higher in Australia and people were wealthier. I guess that has been the attraction for so many Greek people to have migrated.

We walked down to Amoudra beach which was almost deserted. The vacant block we walked through was strewn with litter. When looking out to sea and back to the shore and hills I pictured in my mind the scene in 1941 at the Battle Crete with the sky thick with German paratroopers and gliders, and the dug in Brits shooting them from defensive posts. This was a mental image I carried for the whole week in Crete - German fighter bombers strafing with their air superiority and the allies defending grimly and bravely, taking huge toll on the paratroop divisions but facing inevitable defeat without support from aircraft.

We spent a couple of hours at a restaurant at Liguria beach for a good lunch. It was my intention to listen to the footy Nth Melbourne West Coast Prelim final on my smart phone but I couldn't get it to work. We had picked up to 3AW before through an app Rob put on my phone, but it wouldn't work for the match, I think I would have had to buy something from the AFL so that it was available. While we were there there was a big gathering of Greek people at nearby tables I think preparing for a function that night at the restaurant. The men were large with big bellies and chain smoked and drank beer after beer. The women also smoked. They were a garrulous and happy group.

We returned to our villa about 20 minutes away and went for a walk down many steps to the 'river' which was a small creek really. We met a young pommie bloke who asked us for directions to Estate Kares. We learned later at dinner that he was a dentist on holiday. He had walked from Gazi. This trip to Crete was supposed to be with his girlfriend but they had had a blue and she refused to go. Having paid for it he came by himself. He was well traveled having been to Peru  and the US and worked in New Zealand for a year which is why he didn't have a hire car, he had bingled one there and the financial result was terrible so he no longer hired cars and caught buses trains and walked wherever he went. He was only 26.

We rang Gord to learn West Coast had beaten North and he also told us Hawthorn had beaten Fremantle the night before.

Georgie our new friend who worked at the villa cooked up a mousaka from her mothers recipe for dinner. We didn't cook for ourselves that last night as we were leaving at 6am to get to the airport early as we had a flight to Athens at 7.30am. We washed down the mousaka and icecream with a bottle of the good wine we had bought at Gazi and some house red to boot. We settled our account with Emmanuel (two dinners two breakfasts and some cold beer here and there) and packed up before going to bed. All we had to do in the morning was get dressed and load the car.

It was a relief to get the car back to the airport with no damage and make our way into the terminal. The good thing about an early get away on a Sunday was very light traffic with little chance of being held up, only by a puncture or something, which did happen to us once returning a hire car to Perth airport. It was hugely crowded even at that hour but we made our flight no problem despite being slugged 45 Euros each as our ticket did not include check in luggage. I didn't get upset about it as I think our travel agent Mary had warned me this might happen. A New Zealand couple we met at Dubai airport were upset about it saying they had copped 75 Euros each leaving Santorini.

So our week in Crete came to and end as we watched the Island from the plane. There were big concrete bunkers visible as we left the coast and I thought these were probably relics from the German occupation 1941-1945, and my Battle of Crete images flashed back. The sky was clear as a bell when we landed at Athens 30 minutes later. We had a seven hour wait at Athens for our connecting flight to Dubai but this was not difficult, it gave us some relaxation time and there's a museum there and lots of historical information about Greece which we found most interesting.

We got to Dubai at about 10.30pm. We were picked up by our transfer the Arabian Court Hotel in Old Dubai opposite the Old Museum, where we were to stay three nights in total. We did a fascinating Dubai city tour first day and walked around old Dubai, and a trip to the Dubai Outlet Mall the second morning followed by a desert sands safari dinner in the afternoon and evening. Dubai is mind blowing, incredible and almost unreal. Not my cup of tea, but worth seeing.

The next day saw us at the airport again for the gruelling trip home- 7 hours to Singapore, an hour there, back on the plane and another 7 hours to Melbourne. Lib took sleeping pills which didn't make her sleep just made her almost incoherent and uncomfortable and fidgety and she almost drove me crazy. I didn't know about the sleeping tablets till she was talking to sister Margaret at Christmas, I just thought she was over fatigued, but she was zombied out.

Was it ever good to see Rob when he picked us up at Tullamarine? Lib crashed asleep in the car on the way home and then went straight to bed when we got home.

And so ended our amazing trip to Europe. It was Thursday morning before the Grand Final. I wish I had missed that crap too.