Dec. 18/19
We ferried from Athens to Crete on an overnight ferry. The ferry was MUCH bigger than we thought it would be, it is basically a retired cruise ship. We ride ferries often in Alaska on our ferry system and I always thought our ferries were quite big, but this one made ours looks small.
It was suggested that we buy the ticket for a specific chair so that we would be sure to have a seat. In the end we probably didn’t have to do that, but it didn’t really matter. We both found places to lie down and sleep, BUT the staff came by and woke us and told us we could not sleep in that area. I moved and so did Harry, I was not awoken again, but they kept harassing Harry so he didn’t sleep much. We eventually made it to Crete about 6 a.m.
Our rental car was waiting for us and we were off to find Blazis House, our apartment for the next 6 nights. It proved to be a bit harder to find that one might think. We first stopped a town too early, as our directions said it was “right after Demitri Hotel,” little did we know most towns have lodging with that name. After some backtracking, and dead end roads we found our great apartment in the town of Almydria. It was about ½ way between Chiana (the port town) and Rethymnon a very popular town with a wonderful ‘old town’ area. It was a QUITE town with a lot of ex-patriots in it, but we didn’t see many people at all, the town was closed up for winter.
We drove to Rethymnon and walked around the old fort and old town for a few hours and at lunch. Headed home to prepare for future Crete adventures. It got dark by 5:30 so we were ready to crash early.
Our housekeeper had left a treat for us on our door, some homemade goat cheese, it was fantastic.
Everyone that we met this day wondered why we were visiting this time of year. It continued to be a theme of the rest of our time on Crete. They certainly were not used to guests in the winter.
timistravels 
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