Day 70 Crete part two

Crete.
Visit Crete. Come for a week and rent a car and travel the back-roads into the mountains and valleys. It’s beautiful and interesting and, like Malta, has been a cross-roads of cultures and civilisations. We are inspired to go and learn more. You have to visit the Minoan ruins in Knossos and Phaestos and the old Roman Crete capital in Gortis. Ignore both Heraklion and Rethimnon but visit Chania where the mountains come right to the coast above the port and are snow-capped through June. The three Greek islands that we visited were good and (if you don’t have it at home) will provide the sun and sea as well as some fabulous settings and some Greek food. Crete provides some real culture. The mustachioed and swarthy men look as though they will carry a grudge for decades and settle it with a knife and they look somber as they sit around their village cafes. The villages also have the 4’ 6” Greek women dressed in black hobbling along with their walking canes. They mourn and wear black for 5 years here but they had so much tragedy that they ended up wearing black all the time and so they just adopted it as their national colour. The three guys playing and singing in the restaurant last night sang nothing but mournful songs and so we asked our mathematics graduate waiter (9 months in the Greek Army and then he will be allowed to teach) to tell us what the songs were about. 50% the usual forlorn love-songs but 50% the tragedy of Crete history and their fights against the Turks and other invaders (they always lost). We went to visit the Monastery at Arkadiou where, in 1866, the Abbot gathered all of the surrounding villagers and then, rather than surrender to the usual rape and pillage, blew all of them (and the 2,000 Turkish soldiers besieging them) up.
Coffee. Starbucks has arrived! In Chania. Doesn’t look too popular but perhaps they can break the coffee cartel pricing here. Regular coffee in a Crete café is about 3-4 euros. Starbucks here in Crete has it at 2 euros so still about twice the US price but 50-60% of the Greek café price. Starbucks confectionary is also about twice the US sizing (which is too large anyway) with massive wedges of chocolate cake (forget about the US low fat coffee cake) and absolutely huge sugary donuts. A recent European Time Magazine issue had the European obesity rate at 20% and the US at 27% but many more Europeans smoke and so perhaps that helps them keep the weight off. However, you don’t see the morbid obesity that you sometimes see in the US. The Greeks like their sugar though and their honey is on a lot of their food. Greece passed a no smoking inside public places law last September but that was largely ignored but is now being enforced. Not very relevant anyway since almost all restaurants have mainly outdoor seating but it will help in hotels eventually.
Day 70. Monday, October 11th. Ferry to Pireaus. Leave at 9.00pm and should get into Pireaus Port around 5.30am tomorrow. We have booked a rental car and will tour the Peloponnese until Sunday and then stay in Athens for 3 days until we fly to Cairo for our next country hop. We will have spent almost a month in Greece by then.