Our Continuing Recovery

Dear Friends and Family, Recovery Day 2. A pretty lazy day this Sunday. I got a nice walk in early in the morning. My memory of Sissi was that it woke up a bit earlier, but that certainly does not seem true this year. The village is very quiet. Some old Greek men sitting have coffee (Greek, I would guess), and shooting the proverbial bull, a few merchants out mopping and sweeping and preparing for another day. As someone told us, you need to make a year’s worth of money in 6 months. It is very quiet in the later fall to early spring when the weather is pretty much as it is in Oregon. You get a quite nice view of the sea and the edge of the village from the front deck of Stuart and Angela’s where we sit and have coffee every morning.

Yesterday, the morning hours were spent sitting by the pool and reading.

We had too busy getting settled in and napping to get much reading done since arriving although we were pretty much read out after 20 or more hours flying to Crete. Polley and I went down to the village around noon, mostly to check e-mail and post the daily blog. We don’t have internet at the apartment (its only failing) so a daily trip to the Ormos Café to check and post is a requirement. It is also a nice place to sit, have a drink and watch the tourist activity: kids swimming, lovers strolling PICTURE HERE And Ducks paddling in threes.

Actually, last year there were ducks paddling in a threesome, these appear and sound more like geese. After that action-packed morning, it was home for lunch and siesta. It is clear we still not fully acclimated as we slept another solid 4 hours in the afternoon. About 7 we went back down to the harbor to catch the sunset. We had missed it the evening before so we grabbed a later dinner reservation and sat until sol went into the sea. For those who follow the blog, you know how we are with sunsets. This one had great potential, what with the clouds and a bit of haze there to add some color.

While I am sure we have seen better, this one was not bad.

At 8:06 pm local time, the sun disappeared for the day and we headed off for dinner. The place is actually a working farm and restaurant called Liofito. It is another simple garden setting and the food is very simple but very good. We had an excellent Greek salad and a flavorful sausage, green pepper/red pepper, onion dish. It was kind of Southern where it has been cooked slowly until it is nearly mush, but the flavors blend beautifully. It was very good and we may, in fact, return tonight. Our bill with wine was about $18. Hard to beat that. Home about 10, talked a bit with Angela about the process of building there place and then it was time to continue our quest to catch up on our sleep. Tomorrow there most likely will not be a blog as we are doing a day trip to Réthymno, a coastal town about 1 ½ hours west of us. Looks charming and I hope to bring back lots of photos. More from us, Wednesday.