My Frugal Greek Vacation, Crete Day 4, Chania

Today just finished my fourth day in my Cretan Greek vacation. One thing I'm absolutely loving about Greece is how laid back everything is here. Today, after a relatively late night in town last night, we slept in and had a pretty chilled out morning.

We, Vera, her friend Mariana, and I then headed into town to do a little self guided walking tour...

The first thing we saw was this memorial of a crashed ship...

And it was right near the sea.

The wind was really something...

It was a hot day, so it was really nice...

Getting sprayed by the sea...

You see that spray? We felt it...

Got one picture of me like this, had to hold my hair because it was flying all over the place and then you couldn't see my face.

We then started walking towards the port...

And saw this gorgeous view of this Venetian era lighthouse...

And then there was a person offering to take pictures of us in front of the lighthouse, with a snake. I wasn't interested, because I'm not a snake person. I'm not squeamish in general, but snakes aren't something that I like...

But Vera convinced me to get in a picture with her and Mariana, and it was a cute photo but I looked horrendous (my hair and wind are not a good combo!) so I won't be sharing that... but then I took a picture of just myself with the snake, and I love so much how that picture came out that I plan on framing it...

A photo of a photo, so not as good quality as the original

Afterwards, Mariana had so much fun just playing with the snake...

That I had to photograph it.

We passed the maritine museum...

And saw various maritime related artifacts...

Plus a plackard that gave us some information about some other historical sights in the area...

As we walked up and down the side streets, we saw many different souvenirs...

Apparently knives are a very Cretan gift...

And limericks are very Cretan as well.

So knives with limericks on them are very common gifts...

And they even had fancy knives with handles made of kri kri (Cretan ibex) horns....

 Lots of olive wood products being sold...

 Including olive wood maps of Crete.

This is all over Crete and needs no explanation... apparently its some sort of Greek symbol?

We saw Greek souvenir cups with names... lucky Marianna was able to find her name... Vera and Penny weren't there...

This amusing sign on a store...

And amusing T shirts...

There were these little mini churches called iconostasia which have religious icons in it and hold the same religious standing as churches, in that buildings built near them can't be torn down, so these will be all over to protect the buildings near them. 

After our little walk we sat down in a cafe along the port, and the waves were so strong that our feet got wet from the waves even though we were some distance...

.

While sitting in the cafe we were discussing our plans for tomorrow. We had plans to go to Elofonisi, the pink sand beach, but with 45 kilometer an hour winds, we won't be able to swim in the beach and the sand will be flying all over, so it just won't be pleasant. It meant needing to scramble last minute trying to figure out plans...

But we ended up deciding that I will be going to Samaria Gorge as part of a guided tour. This isn't so cheap, but Vera ended up paying it for me as a gift. All included its 42 Euros for a whole day thing, leaving at 5:30 in the morning and coming back at 9 at night... Vera isn't coming along since she can't really do the hike...

 Afterwards, we drove back and hung out with Vera's mother, and Vera's Koumbara, something Greek Orthodox that Vera explained to me. Vera met Sirmalenia as a therapist, but because there aren't professional boundaries in Greece, they ended up becoming close friends, and then she ended up being the one who married them, and according to Greek Orthodox, they're now related... 

Had a really wonderful if laid back day...

But now I'm going to wrap up, so I can get a good night's sleep before my long day in the Samaria Gorge tomorrow!