Flight delayed by 2 hours. This is not funny, given that I was awake and up at 0405 this morning. Urgh.
So, we actually took off at 1050. That was fun. It meant that lunch was half a hash brown, a rubbery bit of egg and a miniature, round and flat bit of shaped sausage 'meat'. Ew.
Ha ha. Ha. Ha. There were 4 flights of luggage appeared in the (massively overcrowded) baggage reclaim hall at roughly the same time and 2 reclaim belts. One was showing the Manchester flight only. All 4 flights had luggage randomly distributed across both belts. Which didn't make for chaos and frayed tempers at all. Oh no. It only took 45 minutes to get our bag, including J skipping through customs and back 3 times to get hold of the rare and elusive luggage trolley.
The taxi journey to Vamos from Chania was exciting to say the least: High speeds, ignoring double white lines and passing other cars to within hair's breadth of oncoming cars. But the final approach was more sedate, through a village and through Vamos itself.
The village is small and the new part indistinguishable from old, to us. It is quite hilly and there are plenty of places to eat and drink, if you include a chocolate shop and a kind of fast food place. There are a few grocery and convenience shops and as well as the chocolate/pastry shop, there is a proper bakery too. So, we should be fine for variety of food. And the cottage is simple, with limited cooking facility made even more limited by the existence of only one casserole pot and a small milk pan. Not a lot to cook with really.
The local Taverna and grocery shops aren't much cop really, so it's been mostly cheese, tomato and stale bread so far.
And I've been bitten. Twice.
17 red, angry, itchy, mosquito bites. I acquired an extra 15 two evenings ago, possibly at the taverna. Since then, I have been using high strength DEET at least at night, and a plug-in anti-flying-insect thingy.
Of course, none of that stops the mad, over-heated itch at 4am which wakes me up and keeps me awake for a couple of hours.
We've been making lots of salads and not gone for another meal out yet. We might try the other taverna next week some time.
The cleaning lady came yesterday and changed the sheets and towels. We now have, as a top sheet on a double bed, a single sheet. This is very very silly in this heat. Very. The really frustrating bit is that the linen cupboard is in the bedroom. But is locked. Sod. What kind of simple lack-wit would think a single sheet is OK for two people in a double bed? It doesn't even reach from one side to the other! And it's Sunday. And we've run out of milk.
Still, my bites being mad itchy kept up awake for only half an hour last night. They are getting smaller and more blistery now, so less and less itchy.
The cleaning lady has been and gone and we have a double sheet once more. Yay!
We went to the city yesterday: Chania. It was an odd mix of delapidated Venetian architecture and a hundred shops selling baseball caps, Liverpool towels, olive oil, olive oil soap, honey, Ouzo, Raki, and various sweets. We walked along the sea front and down the twisty alleys and eventually perched at a cafe to drink local(ish) beer. My Greek has succeeded beyond 'hello' and 'good evening' to ordering beer and the odd thing from the Greek side of the menu instead of the English side. And the Cretans are so much nicer about that than, say, the French. They don't always barge in in English if you try Greek. They let you try, understand what you said and don't look at you like you're from Mars. Anyway, we had enormous prawns at a sea front restaurant and got a taxi back to Vamos (the last bus leaves Chania at 8pm). We're still not sun burnt or heat stroked and my bites aren't itchy any more.
The bite count is up to 18 now, but the latest one is not so bad as it is solitary.
And then came the rain. In Biblical quantity. But only for an hour, thankfully.
For 24 hours, the road outside the cottage became a river. The rain was impressive drops, ten times the size of our crappy British rain. And it was a bit cooler for a while afterwards. But still the mosquitoes came. 26 is the current count, including the one on the palm of my hand. The palm, goddammit!
So here I am wearing jeans and socks and shoes, in near as dammit 30° and I'm not even feeling that hot.
We sat and had coffee and tart in the Art Cafe earlier: Greek coffee, apparently a dying vice with the advent of frappes in these parts. The coffee was served in little copper pots and were thick with sludgey grounds which should be left to settle after pouring. The cafe seems to be the place where the British ex-pats hang out, at least in the morning, and drink frappes and eat apple tart.
With the bite count maxed at 30, I'm back in a country where you can put loo paper down the toilet with impunity. Hoorah!
Huffy window shutting season has started early this year. *sigh*
Road tax has been being called car tax for a little while now. Which, though a little irritating, does indicate the desire by the government to be seen to be punishing polluters and encouraging the use of public transport (regardless of whether there is sufficient provision of affordable and reasonably speedy public transport to and from the relevant places). But here is a new example of stupidity, under-handedness or plain carelessness in the running of things. I recieved a form (as will most people in England) asking me to make sure that all (exactly all and no more than that) of the eligible voters in my household are registered to vote in the relevant constituency, but there is a new (or at least revised) column to indicate nationality, and thus eligibility to vote I guess. But the indicator is not listed as 'nationality' but asks you to specify what passport you hold. So, now you need a passport to vote. Apparently.
It has long been the case that you really do need either a driving licence or passport to open a bank account with a new bank, which is a bit of a bugger for blind people who have never felt the desire to travel abroad, for example. OK, I'm guessing that you don't actually have to have a passport to get (or stay) on the electoral roll and that the new form is just badly designed, but the implication is there. Is this the government pushing, albeit unsubtlely, the National ID card? Or is it just general lack of care and thought on the part of the authorities?
