back to athens

so we rented a car for five days on crete, allowing us to zig-zag our way all across the island. we started in chania, a venetian port-town on the northwest coast, initially heading almost due south towards the town of paleochora. this first drive was something of an adventure, as it introduced us to the insanity that is greek driving. first off, apparently the system in greece for acquiring a driver's license is incredibly corrupt, meaning that (according to our tour guide in athens) nearly 1/3 of the people on the road paid for their licenses without a hint of former road experience. we got to see such drivers in action, forcing me to overcome some fears and allowing alex to embrace his inner love of no-rules, no-road-lines, just-get-there-however-it-seems-even-remotely-possible style of driving. on the first day driving down to the libyan sea (that side of the island faces africa) we encountered another fun driving challenge, which is that when the cretans do construction on their already more or less one lane, windy mountain highways, they seem to have no qualms about forcing you to drive through their active worksite on a thin strip of unpaved, uneven road between moving machinery. yipee, how exciting! actually though, it was. after managing to navigate that mess we came upon a perhaps less dangerous, but equally exciting obstacle in the road - the cretan mountain crab. really, there were large crabs making their way across the highway, easily 30 km from the ocean and quite high up in elevation. wtf, right? over the next few days we crossed back and forth across the island a total of three times, having to stop or slow down rather routinely for roadwork, a few more crabs, and, on a number of occasions for sheep or goats lazily making their way to the other side of the road. our trusty little hyundai made it through though, and took us to sites we almost certainly would have missed otherwise. on thanksgiving we got up early, went to an ancient minoan site called gortyn (which was also later the capital city of roman crete/north africa), meandered there for a bit, then headed up back to the north side of the island, stopping off at an orthadox monastary along the way. a presiding monk graciously welcomed us, showed us their collection of byzantine relics and let us wander around the intensely peaceful courtyard that only a few hundred years ago was under heavy attack by the ottoman turks. from there we headed to cafe that offered us what we decided was our thanksgiving feast. in a tiny little hilltop town (quite different from the italian hilltop towns we encountered... greek towns are full of sad little houses and lots of olive picking equipment, rather than picturesque castle-like villages) we came upon a restaurant that was actually open - quite an achievement for the off season. after parking we walked up and were greeted by the softly swinging carcass of a freshly-slaughtered lamb. i uttered a few "jesus christ"-style remarks, we went in, and alex ordered the lamb. we were the only customers, and seemed to be interrupting the large family meal. after a few exchanged remarks though, such as "you american - obama good, yes? bush no good." we were like old friends and the patriarch of the family ordered alex an extra plate of all of the fanciest innards available from the poor little lamb outside, which he graciously ingested. all in all it was a nice meal, and yet again reinforced what everyone says about greeks being a friendly folk. the rest of the week was spent swimming, viewing ancient sites, getting lost and unlost amongst dozens of tiny little villages, and slowly making our way back to crete, where we left this morning to come back to athens. crete was a lovely place, but clearly has been aversely affected by intense tourism. in a way i'm happy that we went on the off-season, as prices were lower and there were hardly any tourists, but it also just underscored the utter dependence the place now has on that industry. beautiful place, but sad.
tomorrow we board the orient express to istanbul... another place full of beauty but marked by sadness. i'm very excited though, so we'll let you know how our journey progresses soon!