This title sounds a bit like a Blue Peter project but refers to the final leg of the journey from Heraklion to the little stone house on the way to Rethymnon.
We were a bit put out by Minoan Lines as they had arbitrarily rescheduled the ferry bookingswe had made without giving us very much information and frankly made marmalade of our 60th birthday celebration trip. We only stayed on top of the game by our own efforts in making contact and trying to sort out things in various places and varying languages. Our ferry boat tickets from Piraeus had been made for an overnight crossing boarding at 9.30 p.m. but we had received a very confused message to tell us back along the road in Italy that the ferry from Piraeus had been postponed and that we had to sail at 4.00 p.m. instead. After phone calls, faxes, messages and visits, we gathered that our time in Venice had been cut short and we had to rush our drive from Patras to Piraeus to fit a different schedule. Finally, when we had lugged all our luggage up from the car 4 floors to our cabin for the last crossing, we belatedly found out that having raced to get an earlier ferry that it was not an overnight but a high speed ferry which disgorged us in Iraklion at 11.00 pm at night. This was just the sort of news that Kimon did not want to hear as he was very tired and the thought of driving through the mountains late at night when he was whacked out already was almost too much to think about.
However, I did get time to get hooked on to the Internet with my Forthnet Card and posted 3 blogs which had been hanging about and waiting for the right connections! The crossing was a bit choppy but we had a light meal, strong coffee and a one-hour rest on our bunks before bundling all our bags down 4 flights back to the car deck again.
All the Greek drivers were in their cars with the engines revving and lights on long before the ship had docked. As we moved down the ramp we were met by knots of buses, taxis and people thronging in all directions as they made their way home after Carnival. The added bonus of arriving the weekend that we chose was that ”Clean Monday” followed the celebrations of the weekend and all the shops were closed. Everyone would now be fasting until Easter. This did not bode well for our first breakfast in Crete but for the time being our eyes were glued to the road looking for a road sign to either Rethymnon or Chania. Part of the festivities of Carnival had obviously been to graffiti over all the road signs so that they were very nearly unreadable. More by luck than by judgement, we found that we were on the right road and heading around lots of mountain bends in the pitch dark. However an hour or so later we pulled off the road into our village and parked with several prayers of thanksgiving and sighs of relief. The village was in complete darkness and so we unloaded as many wheelie cases as we could manage and crept quietly along the alleyways to the house. K’s stirling efforts behind the wheel were truly heroic and he did deserve a medal after such a marathon.
We woke up late in the day on “Clean Monday” and set about sweeping and cleaning all the accumulated dust and leaves of six months from the house and courtyard. K went to see if the little store was open down the road but, no, it was a bank holiday and we made the most of the stock of provisions we had brought from England or stowed away on the journey. We were told later that in Crete, Clean Monday was the day for eating fish and flying kites! We will need to unravel that mysterious combination at a later date.
PS All the Greek weather forecasts predict snow in the next day or two!!!!!
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