Other posts on this trip: We Spent Last Week in Italy, Wandering Treviso, Cortina, and Bologna, Museo Ferrari, Venice, Italy. 

After our week in Italy, we actually headed on to Greece for another week. We just got home yesterday. My mother-in-law and stepfather-in-law have a vacation home there, so we stayed with them and spent the week bumming around the local beaches and towns.

I had a terrible flight from Bologna to Chania, I was sick on the plane. I picked up some kind of stomach bug that casually made its way through the whole house, but we made it and still had a fabulous week. Their house is up in the hills, and the first night (after I slept all day while they took H to the beach) we ate on their second floor terrace and enjoyed the view.

The next day we went for Sunday lunch at this incredible taverna built into a hill. It was on three levels. with waterfalls cascading down each level, and it was the most breathtaking place I’ve ever eaten. Just so, incredibly cool. We had spit-roasted lamb, and potatoes, and salads, and trout, and cheese pies, and it was amazing. Nothing fancy, but absolutely memorable.

Then we headed to the beach in Almyrida. She loved it. But the sea had brought in a horde of those fish that nibble dead skin off of your feet, and they were not so fun to swim with. But still a beautiful beach, and a great time, and she spent hours hanging out here during the week.

And ate some snacked at another spot in Almyrida, right down the road from the beach. 

On Monday Adam and I actually headed into Chania and spent two nights at a hotel while H hung out with her grandparents and had the time of her life.

Adam spent most of Monday in bed at the hotel, asleep with the bug I passed around. So I wandered the city center on my own, and I loved it. I did not love that he was too sick to go out for dinner or do much, but wandering on your own in a foreign city is sometimes incredibly marvelous.

These market tents were set up in 1866 Square.

There were several small bookstores around town, but I stopped in this one to buy a book of fairy tales for H (in Greek) and look at the bestsellers. Like this familiar book.

I bought honey in the square on the way back to the hotel. 

Adam came out with me for about 10 minutes so I could pick up some dinner, and I’d read that Thraka had the best gyros basically in the world. And it was pretty darn excellent.

Adam had to go back to the hotel, but I went back out to watch a concert in the square. Local dancers and musicians, families everywhere, the concert went until around midnight. It was wonderful.

Adam was better on Tuesday, so we wandered the city, went down to the Old Venetian Harbor, ate food, had dinner by the water, and generally just loved walking around the bustling city. It was incredibly busy, since it was the last week of August, and the last week of vacation for most southern Europeans.

And, I shopped. Quite a bit. Fabric for H’s Halloween costume at a fantastic little shop called Ippodameia.

A yarn shop I didn’t get the name of, but the owner was lovely, and they had local Greek wool yarns for unreal prices. About €3-€4 a skein.

And, best of all, I bought this completely amazing leather jacket on Skrydlof Street, also known as Leather Lane. I’m so in love with it, I went back and looked at it 3 times before I bought it. They had a seamstress shorten the sleeves for me, and I will wear it for absolutely ever.

Then on Wednesday Cora, Ian, and H came in to Chania to meet us. And we ate more food, at a spot near the water.

Took a horse-drawn carriage ride around the harbor. 

Played with these postcards I bought from a store in town called Memorabilia, with Greek myths illustrated.

Watched the waves trying to get up on the sidewalk, and rooting for them. “You can do it, waves!”

And walking to the end of the harbor to look at everything. 

After that, the rest of the trip was basically hanging out. We went to a local water park on Thursday, and that night we went for dinner and Cora and H had a chat with the ocean.

Friday it was time to pack up and make the two hour drive to Heraklion so we could catch a flight back to Milan and then catch another flight to JFK. It was a long, hard two days of travel, with delays at Heraklion, a few hours at a hotel in Milan, then the 9 hour flight home. Then the drive home. But, on that last day, we did stop in Rethymno for lunch and a walk around the city, and it was a nice break before the chaos of a long trip home.

And now we’re back, with such great memories of the last two weeks, another day at home to recover and get back to real life, and then it’s the first day of school on Tuesday! Goodbye, summer.