Second day of Crete

 I want to note that we have have had spectacular weather throughout this trip. It's a been a bit cloudy at times and there was morning fog on the part of Santorini where we were staying, but otherwise sunny and comfortable, high temps in the upper 60's and lows in the upper 50's. It's not really beach weather yet, but it's warm enough to go to the beach if you care to.

Our second day on Crete we drove to Chania, the second biggest city on the island after Heraklion, where we were staying. It's a two hour drive, which was a lot, but the scenery was beautiful, the road is good for the most part and we had a nice car. The roads are two lanes for the most part and they're hilly, so there's a lot of passing going on. The road has wide shoulders, so people who are expecting to be passed tend to drift over so half the car is on the shoulder, which essentially makes a 3rd lane for passing. Given that, the double lines appear to be meaningless. If you can see ahead and everyone's moved over you can go and pass 1, 2, 5 cars and trucks at a time. It's a little hairy at times but nothing worse than driving in Manhattan.

Chania appears like any city when you arrived and again, unlike Santorini, there are real cities on Crete. Chania has over 100,000 residents. That's about 7 times the total number of permanent residents on Santorini. And Chania is only the second biggest city. Anyway, we crawled through city traffic until we found an underground parking garage that, while very tight, was navigable. From there we walked to the old town, which is Venetian in character and quite pretty. There's a nice square with cafes and shops and and old church, a long waterfront area leading eventually to a lighthouse, and a warren of little alleys, so with shops, some not. 

We walked around a bit and then found the one synagogue on Crete. Before WWII, there was a real Jewish population on the island that was well accepted, but the Germans rounded them all up, put them on a boat, probably to the camps, and it was sunk by a British torpedo killing everyone on board before they arrived. The synagogue in Chania fell into disrepair until around 1990 and there's a small, ecumenical congregation of people with some kind of Jewish background that rebuilt, maintains and worships there. It's tiny, but very inviting. Our visit was marred somewhat by an obnoxious couple, likely Israeli, who were disrespectful of the rules and the people. But it seemed like the people who worked there had handled this sort of thing before and nothing escalated. 

We had coffee and some food on the square, bought some stuff, walked around and then headed back. It was our last night on Crete and we ate at Peskesi, an authentic Cretan restaurant that is known as one of the best in Heraklion, the large city where we were staying. Unfortunately, there's not a menu on their website. This place was great. The food and wine were great- we mostly let the waiter order for us given some direction. I had an appetizer that was beans and leeks that was somehow delicious, but not as good as my pork roasted in honey and thyme from their farm. Ronnie had eel and then goat that were also delicious. We didn't want dessert, but they brought us some anyway and along with it a glass of pink stuff, a rose liqueur that they make in house. Yum. We told the waiter that we liked it and they brought us each two more. 

It was one of the most fun dinners I can remember eating, and remember that we're pretty sick of restaurants at this point. We then walked back to our hotel, and just in case we couldn't figure out how to get in...

This is a nice hotel, but the lobby is just fucking weird. There are two entrances, the PULL one, which lets you in on lobby level, and the one on the main street, where we parked that car. In that one, you come in and there's nothing, just a little elevator. You got in that, search for the button to go up, which is where the door open button usually is, and guess that you're going to the 0 floor (the other option being -1). No sign or anything. It goes up and the elevator opens facing away from reception and toward the cafe. You weave around the many big columns, try to avoid the spiral staircase this is a head-banger waiting to happen, and there is the reception desk. The other thing was that the key cards seemed to only hold their information for a few hours, so in the 2 days we were there we probably went through 8 of them.

We got back to our room, watched Netflix, which was on the TV for some reason and went to bed. Early ferry in the morning.