On The Road – Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes – In the COVID time in Crete

Our guide was kind enough to arrange this with his parish priest at a pretty famous spot – the priest is his personal friend and the one who married him. The church was the headquarters of the Cretan Revolution against the Turks and the home parish of Eleftherios Venizelos (a Revolution commander instrumental in Union with Greece and several time Greek Prime Minister).

While I am no longer dogmatic at all, I do still respect my own family religious tradition, and it was a really important thing for us as a couple. Turns out that the Greeks generally don’t do these sorts of vow renewal/blessings, but there is a service for it and the priest was aware of the fact that a number of Americans want this sort of thing and is willing to accommodate that.  We brought the crowns with us, and bought new linen clothing (along with Euros and good bourbon for the priest).

It was really special.

While in Chania those days, we did everything from wine tasting and restaurant walks (all inexpensive) to treks to Falassarna and Balos beaches, where I climbed up a hillside that the goats avoided, all to scramble on rocks for a great view while nursing my still-recovering leg.

This 3000 year old olive tree still bears fruit (I tasted it – bitter, but you could tell the promise). It is a beautiful thing at a place where a smallish farm includes olive, fig, pomegranate production, along with chickens, pigs, goats, beehives and a really sizeable kitchen garden.

After arriving in the area of Chora Sfakion (an hour and a half by public bus which cost something like 9 Euros apiece), we spent a lot of time at the rocky beach, by the pool and wandering the road to the beach in the buff as the stay was at a naturist resort. Things we noticed were that we were right in the middle band age wise (we were the only Americans, the rest were Brits, Germans, Poles and Lithuanians). Nothing was weird, everybody was friendly and nobody creepy.

Photos I didn’t include – the Milky Way on a clear night (Bill does those better) and the screechiest doves I ever heard (that’s Albatrossity’s turf). Also, I tried taking shots of the wild thyme and rosemary by the road, but those kind of sucked and didn’t do it justice.”, nor did my shots of abundant goats and sizeable uplift (Crete sits kind of at the confluence of the African, Asian and European plates, and the water frequently churns up with seismic activity – we saw it on the beaches).

Anyway, we ended up joining a naturist boat ride to Gavdos Island, southernmost point in Europe and the site of some fantastic wild beaches that we got to enjoy. As we went out, dust whipping off North Africa created a haze, and you could feel and taste that dust on the tongue. This rock formation is at the south most point on the island, and is stunning.

This is the port of Loutro, previously known as Phoenix during Minoan/Mycenaean times. In ancient times, the people of Anopolis ran pipes from this hilltop (now the site of a church) down to the port in order to send liquids as trade goods. This was to be our stay in two days time.

Byzantine ruins at Anopolis, built from the stone left over from the previous Minoan and Mycenaean ruins from ancient times before. This area has new homes, old homes, working farms, olive groves, goats, figs, chickens, prickly pear, etc.

View from our fourth floor room, up a daunting 75 stairs on my crap knee….

Also known as Sweetwater Beach, there is freshwater runoff that bubbles down to the very pleasant rounded pebbles below. There’s a great taverna on the left; the left side is mostly clothed, right side naturist. Ferry rides were 4 Euros a trip, and two loungers with umbrella was a grand total of 6 Euros. Beer was 2.50 and a shot of raki was .50.

This was our final stay, on the top floor of a Venetian structure. We had the large terrace with the large swing bed overlooking the harbor. I have great video of the harbor from there.

We, um, weren’t aware of how exposed we actually were up there that evening…….