When we woke up this morning it was sunny skies in Santorini! We enjoyed our last breakfast on the terrace and headed to the airport for our trip to Crete (via Athens). The Santorini airport is tiny and they have a lot of funny inefficiencies that we found odd. They scan people's boarding pass and let you onto a small sidewalk, but don't let you walk anywhere until you are basically like a group of cattle in a pen. Then, they open one of the chains and allow you to walk down a set of stairs toward the runway…but you board a bus to the plane that literally drives less than 100 yards to the plane. Then it's a free-for-all as they board from both the back and front entrances of the plane, so I'm really not sure why we weren't allowed to just walk to the plane from the stairway. But anyway, we made it on the plane. Kevin realized mid-way through the safety video that was playing that Giannis, from the Milwaukee Bucks, is the main character acting out all of the safety stuff in the video in English and Greek! We had a short layover in Athens and then boarded our second flight.

As we started our decent into Crete the other side of the plane was clearly looking at something interesting out of their window…and we realized it was because there were large mountains that were covered in tons and tons of snow. Not just some small snow tipped mountains, there was still feet of snow on much of the mountainside from what we could tell. It seemed crazy since many of us on the plane were coming here hoping for some warmer weather and sunshine! Luckily it was a beautiful day, albeit a bit windy. As we exited the airport we found the guy holding the National Rental Car sign and he said he'd bring us to the rental agency as soon as he had all of the people on the list. We waited outside as instructed. When he came to get us we realized that almost all of the people on the sidewalk were also waiting for him! There were way too many people to fit in his small van and even when he limited it to just the drivers there still weren't enough spots. We decided to wait for the second van so we could stick together. The second van came shortly after and when we arrived at the lot we were a bit surprised to see that the majority of the 9-10 people that had come before us were still in the line! That was a bit disheartening. We realized a bit later that the main problem was that many of the people that had rented cars did not have an international driver's license. So they were arguing with the agents to still rent them cars, but they wouldn't so it was clearly taking a very long time. Side note, Kevin and I cannot figure out the point of the international driver's license! We just paid AAA $20 to put some passport pics onto a handwritten driver's license. It is, however, the law in Greece to have one if you are not from an EU country. We have never needed them before, but luckily I read about it so we both have them while we're here!

Anyway, after way too long at the rental car company, we were on our way. Chania is the second largest city in Crete and as we entered it seemed way bigger than we had expected. We made our way to a free parking area because we are staying in "Old Town" and there aren't any cars allowed. We circled around to the sea side of the street and were met with beautiful views of an old part of the city that was clearly rehabbed and faced a very nice breaker that had a boardwalk and lighthouse. There are lots of restaurants lining the first level with hotels above and behind that there are shops and cafes. When we got to our hotel we were very surprised to have been upgraded to their honeymoon suite! It is gorgeous! It has huge windows looking out over the wharf and a small sitting area in front of the windows. It also has a huge rain shower and 12+ foot ceilings that are carved and painted. We even got a small bottle of champagne!

After we relaxed a bit we decided to find some dinner. We went to the breaker wall. From there you could clearly see the sea, the sun, and the snowcapped mountains! We explored the town a little bit and landed on one of the recommendations from the hotel for a restaurant on the water. Kevin had the lamb osso bucco that was delicious and I went with the seared tuna which was also great! They gave us a little bit of "mosaic cake" as a complimentary dessert and I was very excited. It's the same as a cake they call biscuit cake in Beirut. Kevin agreed that it was delicious! We made our way back to the hotel to relax and play a couple of rounds of cribbage before calling it a night. So far so good in Crete!