Domestic chores have not been any sort of antidote to all the partying of the past week or two. Lots of cooking; lots of cleaning but an elephant's sufficiency for eating too. Day by day we have been preparing to receive visitors who are arriving in Crete via cruise ships and there has been a lot to do inside and outside the house before they get here - in between lots and lots of eating out.
At the weekend, we had the Annual CIC
Red Cross Coffee Morning, which was a tricky occasion for our friend
Ev since it was the first year that Bob had not been taking the
stage. Bob was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer soon after last
year's coffee morning and nobody could believe how quickly the
disease had taken him away from us. So with extra efforts we had all
been cooking our socks off and tables at Camping Elizabeth were
groaning with all the goodies which had been prepared. All our 10
euros entrance fees and donated raffle prizes made a good show and we
raised in the region of 1200 euros for the Red Cross and Samaritans.
It was so good to know that we could still do a good job, even
without Bob at the helm and Ev carried off all the compere-ing with
great aplomb – she was quite amazing. Despite the strong sunshine,
it was still not quite warm enough to go swimming in the sea yet (and
we were all a bit full of cake).
All the plants have been blooming
upstairs and downstairs and we have enjoyed the improving weather with
gusto. I took a trip to a large house-ware shop with our friends the
Brods and their friends last week. The weather forecast had not been
good for that day, so we all had umbrellas and raincoats just in case
and stopped at the Brods' favourite roadhouse for hot chocolates and
coffees halfway there. The store was brilliant with lots of great
furniture, kitchen ware and just the kitchen stools I had been
looking for – sadly in flat pack form but hey ho – so I bought
two and we abandoned our idea of touring Chania because the weather
was windy and wet. Stopping at Cretan Corner on the way home, we
shared a lovely meal together and I was glad to get to a place that I
had heard of many times but never visited before. The lady
proprietor was English married to a Greek man and they had a very
nice taverna in a village called Aptera. On a good day, the view
would have been wonderful but … it was not a good day for
landscapes. When I arrived home K said there had been an almighty
thunderstorm in Skepasti and flooding in various parts of Crete.
On Wednesday, we set off for Heraklion
having booked an overnight stay in a hotel in the centre. We killed
two birds with one stone by dropping off K's large envelope
containing the MRI scan films (sheets of them) for the Oncology
Department at the University Hospital. Sneekily, we parked in the
hospital car park and hailed a taxi from outside the door to the
centre of the city since the traffic is always so very busy and we
were not sure where we were heading for.
The hotel turned out to be very
comfortable, modern and reasonably close to the shopping centre and
large Lions Fountain. The centre was full of tourists and students and the
atmosphere was lively, however trying to get cash from an ATM was not
straightforward and lots of the machines had run out of money. We
hear news reports that national loan payments are being made with
difficulty and that local authorities are being asked to donate their
education budgets to help the national government pay their dues.
This is all very confusing because everywhere hotels and businesses
have been modernised and look very prosperous, every road on the
island, however remote, seems to have been channelled out to receive
fibre optic cables (even around the mountain tops), so we can't work
out easily the true state of things. It
seems best to take it one day at a time.
Anyway, after this digression, and back
in Heraklion we got up early on Thursday, took full advantage of a
sumptuous buffet breakfast (!) and took a taxi to the port where all the
security staff had been alerted about our arrival. We were to visit
our nephew Kieran who has recently started cadet training with
merchant navy and is doing his first stint at sea on the Star Pride
of the Windstar Cruises group. We had been reminding each other “not
to forget the chocolate” for several days since he said that it was
the only thing that he needed and we had bought a small cold bag,
stocked up with a few lots of tuck to keep body and soul together!
The ship was very smart, he looked happy and busy. We had a bit of
a wait while the crew needed to do a fire drill and life boat drill
as part of their port inspection. Bells were going, hooters sounding
and all sorts of personnel were involved doing lots of different
things. We sat in a plush lounge watching the sea, reading a
wonderful collection of atlases and books and being plied with coffee
and soft drinks while all this was going on. Yes, I could quite
imagine myself enjoying a nice cruise (probably beyond our pockets,
sadly) and K was happy talking about marine engines and other
nautical things while I enjoyed looking about me. Eventually,
Kieran appeared again and was given time off and we jumped in a taxi
to the centre of town and found a good place to have a slap up Greek
meal! The ship had come from Piraeus and the Pelopponese and would
be off to Santorini, Rhodes and Istanbul after Crete. I did my usual
trick of falling over (dodgy Greek steps) and disappeared out of the
shop and on to the pavement – fortunately not breaking anything.
We stocked up on souvenirs, and made sure that Kieran got back to his
ship in good time – the taxi driver gave him an enormous fresh
orange as he got out of the car. A souvenir shop lady had given him
a free gift fridge magnet. He was overcome by everyone's
friendliness. I am horrified at how quickly I have begun to take the overwhelming hospitality for granted. And on Friday, we
went to a lunchtime birthday party and ate more cake!!! Any
suggestions for diet plans gratefully received since all our good resolutions are falling by the wayside.
We have two more cruise visitors due on
Monday at our house. We have been trailing them on Facebook through Italy, the Aegean and Greece and will hear more about their adventures for the next blog.
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