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Our arrival in Crete was heralded by a beautiful sunrise. Jan was planned to wake me at 0730 for breakfast and a shore trip exploring the 'Villages of Crete'. I arose early because we had to muster at 0815 to go ashore. met Vonny and John for breakfast and when Sylvia arrived she said Jan could not open the cabin safe. She had requested help because our shore excursion tickets were in the safe. You could not make it up ! I took croissants and butter to Jan's cabin and we secured money etc in my cabin safe. Finally we got ashore and we are Excursion IKR07 but we were badged as no 1. You could not make it up ! We boarded a 60 seater bus with some 50 Germans and a few English speaking folk. As soon as we moved we had a Greek guy rattling in German, after a while, he was replaced by an English speaking lady who announced we were about to do 300 km!! - in a morning ! - on country roads ! Jan reckoned we should be back at 1pm so there was not much time for walking in the villages ! Between the pair they rattled on until we had traversed Crete along the EU financed new road which winds from Heraklion to the other end of the island. As we progressed I became aware that the bus driver, appearing to be about 15 yrs, drove with one hand out the window. Some feat as the narrow streets left inches to spare, time and again, but we only stopped once for a badly parked car. We alighted in a none-too-pretty car park and were told to be back in 20 minutes. The 'village' had not been warned of our visit and was mostly closed. I took a few pictures, managed to drop my camera on concrete without actually breaking it and we re-boarded having found a 50c bottle of water. Apparently we had done the long hike and would now stop a couple of times on the way back. Minutes later we parked by an olive grove and got told we need to re-join the bus after 40 mins as we were going to look at a church. Actually the 12C Byzantine chapel was fascinating - 3 euro to enter ! Only small but with painted ceilings from 1300 odd. Our English speaking lady guide kept Jan amused for ages while I took pictures - no flash allowed. Jan was fascinated by the panels telling the bibile stories, including a detail showing John the Baptist's head in a bowl ! Having done the chapel we moved to the next town and got told we had an hour to wander and if required, have lunch. Jan and I had heathy salads (with chips), wine and beer. We also have 20 mins wifi for free ! Finished lunch and of course we were last on the bus (they are Germans) One nice guy told us the German narration was rubbish and the lady speaking in English was far superior - most of them will never know ! We got back after 2pm and crashed until G&T time. |
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