That means hello in Greek. It took us forever to memorize some simple Greek phrases, and then of course by the time we did it was time to leave.

After returning from Ireland, we spent a few more days in London getting ourselves together for what seems like a vacation within a vacation. A good friend of ours Christine was going to be in Greece around the same time as us, so we had been planning a Greek island beach trip with her for a while. We eventually settled on Crete, a popular destination among Greek vacationers. We decided to fly into Athens and meet up with her there for a day of touristing before taking off to Crete.

As we took off from Heathrow to Athens, we realized this might be our last big flight for a while given our plans to travel by bike – detailed in our next post – for the rest of our European adventures.

We made it to Athens pretty late and went right to sleep. We had booked an overnight ferry leaving the next night for Crete so we only had one day to tour Athens. We started the next morning with our first attempt to order coffee and pastries. This was our first big trip to a place where we truly didn’t know the language or culture. Although a lot of people know English, or at least broken English, still others don’t know a lick of it. We got around fine, though, and visited the Temple of Zeus and Hadrian’s Gate in the morning, which sparked our usual discussions about ancient peoples. This of course staying with the emerging theme of our travels – prehistory, ancient history and culture, emergence of civilization, etc.

We walked around some shops and visited the Acropolis museum before meeting up with Christine in the afternoon and going to the actual Acropolis ruins, which was an incredible site and view of the city. After our visit there and some walking around the city and catching up with our buddy, we all made our way to the port and readied ourselves for a nine hour ferry ride. Christine had booked an “air chair” (fancy pants) but Javi and I were on “deck chairs” which just means you can sleep anywhere on the floor inside or out on the deck. We chose the deck. The ferry ride was a totally interesting and unexpected experience. People were everywhere, jockeying for floor space to sleep. A total zoo with little to no oversight by anyone in a position of authority. It’s so exciting and weird, experiencing a different cultural thing for the first time.

We of course barely got any sleep but made it to Crete, “waking” up in time for the sunrise as we came into port. None of us knew what to expect in Chania (pronounced Ha-nya), the town where we booked a place, because we honestly had done very little research. But we were stoked to find a beautiful spot with yummy food, lots of interesting history, and lovely beaches. We spent the week just marveling at how everything really went beyond any expectations we might have had. Christine’s brother joined us later in the week (they were both in Greece for a family wedding), and we had a great time just chilling on the beaches and visiting museums. The Archeological Museum in Chania was amazing and showcased items from the area dating back 5000 or more years. The history of Crete and the Minoan’s is fascinating (“the first link in the chain of Europe”) and we felt like we were truly in an ancient and special place.

We mostly stuck around Chania during the week, but the last day we rented a car and went to the western coast of Crete to visit the beaches of Elafonisi and Balos. Both were incredible but Balos especially blew all of our minds. We have determined it is the coolest beach we have ever visited (sorry Kalaulau). That last day really made the whole trip. Driving around and seeing different parts of the island and visiting the kinds of beaches you see in travel magazines, we felt like we really accomplished a solid adventure.

After saying goodbye to our pals, we had one last chill day in Chania before taking another overnight ferry back to Athens. This time we booked the air chairs.

We spent the next 36 hours in Athens running around like crazy people trying to get everything together for the next huge phase of our trip – bike tour. More on this insanity in the next post.