Home » Greece » Rethymnon - Greece

WE CAME TO CRETE FOR PURE RELAXATION. NO STRESS. NOT TOO MUCH SIGHTSEEING. I was on the verge of leaving a job ...

Rethymnon - Greece

Gaby
2004-01-25 13:15:03

Displayed times (last time: )

we got inside, felt like an oven.

After fifteen minutes, a little red light went on on the dashboard. It wasn't the oil. It wasn't the water. What was it? We didn't recognize the symbol next to the light, so we stopped by a garage.
No problem, said the man from the garage, but couldn't explain what it was.
We drove on. The light had gone out. Five minutes later, it was on again. We stopped at another garage.
It is the water, said the man from the garage, and he put some more water in the car. That should fix it.

It didn't. As we were heading for the hills, in a country where we didn't speak the language, we thought it best to turn back and return the car.

In a way we were relieved that we didn't have to drive anywhere. It was too hot anyway, and we would much rather just stay on the Rethymnon beach.

April 1999

In Belgium the weather had been cold and wet for as long as we could remember. We hoped another holiday in Crete would bring relief. There were no warm clothes in our bags and certainly no umbrellas. We were going to meet the sun!

It rained for three days in a row. The tourist season hadn't really started yet, and with good reason. The lady from the hotel told us that in the Greek orthodox Holy Week, the weather was always bad. Jesus had suffered and so should we. In the streets of Rethymnon, workers were digging and building, painting and hammering. In hotel Mythos, the warm water was boiling hot and the cold water was brown. The extra blankets were at the cleaner's and the heating was not fixed yet. For two days we shivered in our rooms, moping at the dark skies and wondering when the pool would warm up sufficiently.

It was an interesting experience: all of a sudden the place had lost all of its charm. My dream of winning the lottery and spending my days writing on a laptop on a Greek island suddenly didn't seem as attractive anymore.

After the first two nights, we were given our old room where we had spent our first holiday together. It was bigger and lighter than the first one, which cheered us up a little. In the evenings, we walked through the narrow streets of the old town. We found some cosy places and the Cretan wine warmed our bones. We discovered a Greek dish with aubergines and tomatoes, called "imam bayaldi", which we liked very much.

On Wednesday morning, we took the bus to Chania.

It was a long ride, but the view was worth it. The hills were covered with olive trees and mimosa and the landscape was littered with white houses. The sun had come out, at last, and the sea glistened blue and green.

I liked what I have seen of Chania: an Italian harbour, lots of small shops, pleasant restaurants. We left in the late afternoon in an overcrowded bus. It had been the first sunny day of our holiday.

We had double blankets by now, the shower had been fixed and everything was going swimmingly.

The next days the sun shone bright and we made up for our lost time.