Our flight back to Crete was at 0530, which meant we were up at 0245 and out the door by 0330. We were surprised that the bus to the airport was full. Early morning flights must be common. Flying with a sinus infection is not fun. We were back to Kosmos by 0800. Christi self-medicated and went to bed. It has been 4 days now, and except for occasionally rousing for food and restroom, she has stayed in bed pretty much the entire time.

While Christi slept, Eric worked on a few chores around the boat, including fixing some chips in the gel coat, more cleaning in the engine room, trying again to hunt down the exact spot of the starboard stabilizer leak (it is somewhere near, or at, the locking pin or the cylinder), and the never ending task of organizing. A Nordhavn 57 pulled into the marina the day we got back from Athens. It is always fun to find a fellow Nordhavn on our travels. Eric spent some time chatting with the owner and helping him with some boat maintenance and repair issues. But Eric spent the vast majority of his time on the most important task of all: complete the quest in his video game, Oblivion. He is pleased to report he finished his game and saved the world.

We figure now is a good time to get caught up on our food reporting. We tried a dish called seafood saganaki. We were expecting the battered, pan fried cheese topped with seafood. We were very surprised when out came something akin to a stew with a rich tomato sauce. It was really good.

Another staple of Greece is souvlaki, which the rest of the world calls kebabs. Pictured here is a souvlaki sandwich, on pita bread, topped with tomato, onion and French fries.

We tried a dish that consisted of small pieces of meat, slices of sausage, pieces of ham, mushrooms and feta in a brown gravy. It is pretty good, though not the best thing we have had. It is called bekre meze.

The day we arrived in Crete, we mentioned eating grilled octopus. We loved it and have ordered it again several times now. Though, admittedly, it is a little hard to look at the tentacles. We are such Americans in that we don’t want our meat products to in any way resemble how they looked when alive. Here is a photo of it.

We have also had pizza a few times and are sad to report that in Greece they do not use sauce. Just dough, cheese and toppings, though granted, tomato pieces are often a topping. Pizza just isn’t the same without a tangy sauce. We have actually had pizzas in other countries without sauce, as well. Sauce must not be a universal thing.

We tried a few new desserts. We bought a box of something called soft sesame seed bars. It is literally a block of honey rolled in sesame seeds. We expected it to be messy, but it isn’t. Well”¦ not messy if you’re fairly careful. A little kid would probably manage to get it everywhere. It is also surprisingly good for being so simple. The photo below is of a dessert called halvas. It looks like chocolate, but it isn’t. It is moist and lightly sweet.

A couple of times we have had restaurant staff complain that we haven’t eaten all our food and insist that we finish it. Greeks are so obsessed with eating! We have had a few restaurants bring us a platter of sliced melon as a complimentary dessert after a meal. Between the raki and melon, most places seem to give you some sort of freebie at the end.

We also wanted to comment on parking. There isn’t anywhere to park cars. Houses typically don’t have garages (we can count the number of garages we have seen in the entire country on our hands), and the streets are typically too narrow to park on. Parking lots and garages are few and far between. We have already mentioned that people often park on the sidewalks, but that is the tip of the iceberg in the creative parking we have seen around Greece. People will park their cars anywhere and everywhere. Most people park on corners. It’s not so bad when they park with the passenger side parallel to the curb. But on many occasions we saw cars parked perpendicular to the curb on a corner, with their butts sticking out in the middle of the intersection! A few times, we have also seen cars park parallel to the one whose nose is on the corner, with literally a row of cars parked smack in the middle of the intersection!