Phoenix Apartments Plakias

... pashas – have all left their mark on towns and villages throughout the island. We had opted against booking an organized tour and decided to team up with our new friends: FIU lecturer David Rifkind (who had given an amazing talk about Crete the previous evening), his wife Holly, Toronto realtor Bill Thom and his girlfriend Angela. It made for a group of six and our attempt to find a van that we could drive ourselves was difficult due to the fact ...

... were looking up!

We found a decent looking place to stay in (Kastro Hotel) on hostelbookers.com and opted to wander around there to see if we could get it a bit cheaper than on the net. Unfortunately, the map on the net wasn't correct and we ended up doing bog laps around Heraklion for AGES in the rain with our backpacks looking for the damn place. Every time we asked someone where it was they pointed us in another direction. I mean, if you don't know ...

Sunday was a rest day to recover from the very late night and the pressures of driving with the Cretans – a competitive sport with few rules. We wandered along the beach and poked round the shops, finding new treats, such as baklava, a honey and pastry dessert that Chris is addicted to. Like Elton John and cocaine, Chris can not go to sleep if he knows there are the remnants of any baklava left in the room. He was devastated to find ...

... side of the carton.

Milly and Chris were arriving at Iraklio at around 10.30pm, but we did not want to try finding the airport in the dark, so drove there in the later afternoon. This was again not an easy drive, but the road improved as we neared Iraklio, and there was not as much bad language.

After locating the airport and driving around it a few times to get out we decided to drive to Keratos, an area by the beach about ...

...And of course, I overslept my alarm and awoke at 7:06am. In a display that still boggles my mind, I somehow managed to get ready and run to the main square by 7:12am. I definitely got a few stares from all the Greek people chilling on the streets as I crazily sprinted to the Starbucks a couple streets over. Luckily, we made it to our bus just in time.

Our bus went at breakneck speed as it wound up the top of the mountain (this seems to be a theme ...

... arrived! with YES YUMMY chocolate breasts! yes I know strange but seemingly perfect to our strange situation of people from last year and a new mistmatch of people from this year and previous years! OH and by the way the boobs were DELICIOUS!!!!! YUMMM!!! In the next few days Julia the crazy German pronounced YULIA will be arriving! and perhaps Marcus who last year showered me in rose petals while I was sleeping (not creepily might I ad!) SO almost the whole ...

... steal my wireless" and so I did. The man who owns it has the very strange method of checking in whereby he sits you down and talks to you about how awesome the place is, and manages to recognise your accent even though it's completely garbled from years of American influences and just general oddity. The hostel is divided into 4 or so cottages, each with 8 bunks in them. And seriously, if you're ...

... are sitting on a terrace sipping fresh orange juice, enjoying baklava and listening to Grecian radio. Nex t week we will try to take a ferr to Italy so whish us good luck! I hope you are well and not becoming too jealous *g*

~*~

SMS from mum

- Liesel are you wlaking through the (Samarian) Gorge now? At the end you can take a boat. Love mama

... Supposedly this was the site of the labyrinth and minotaur. I struggled for a bit with my lonely planet guide book, but gave up trying to correlate a vast fascinating empire with a bunch of rocks after a while. I was wondering whether to cut my trip short. I made it back to Hearklio and found an internet cafe. A close friend of mine, Kris, was online so I chatted with her. That lifted my spirits quite a bit. I have been a little ...

and now for something completely similar ... spent the last three days in Plakias doing a whole lot of absolutely nothing. It's getting tiring. It feels eerily like the week I spent at Myrtle Beach before graduation. The first couple of days of lying around on the beach drinking were fantastic, but after a week I wanted to shoot myself. Funny how the shweetest shiznit can get so cripplingly boring. Ahh but this is not so bad. The weather ...