Days 13 Heriklion (Iriklion) - or - renting the mini-bus

Once we landed in Heriklion we had two immediate orders of business: 1. get a rental car and 2. find out how to get off of Crete (to Turkey, Mykonos, Santorini, Croatia, Egypt, Libya). After some fairly extensive flirting, Mer was able to get a rental car or van or bus from a random guy at the airport. Somehow, she got him to call around to some ferry terminals and find some ferry times. While Mer was securing a car and a date to the prom, the rest of us were at the tourist information counter trying to figure out how we were getting off the island. There was a small problem, no one was there. Fortunately, we ended up talking to a nice local, who was somehow connected to tourism in Greece. After a lot of talking she basically said that we needed to go the ferry terminal.

But, now we had a rental bus. It was pretty clear I wasn’t happy with Mer’s car choice – but who would? It was a huge minivan with a 0.5 Liter engine. So, it had the pick up of a…John Hamilton sprinting in 8th grade.*

So – it was a big ugly not fun to drive, van. Let’s move on.
We spend about 5 hours driving around in said minivan looking for our accommodations for the night. I think I might stop mentioning that we drive around for a long time looking for accommodation. It should just be a given that we spend forever looking for our place to stay. Sure, part of it is our fault, but a big part of it is:
1. There are few, if any road signs
2. It doesn’t matter if there were, because a) no one uses them and b) the road name changes about every ¾ of a block.
3. Its never very clear what is a one-way, two-way, no-way. Because there aren’t signs and when there are signs, they aren’t clear
4. The guidebooks maps leave a lot to be desired and don’t indicate one-ways, etc.
Our accommodations are great. And there is a parking spot that will fit our school bus – the handicapped parking space. I don’t ask any questions.
Frommers had provided a couple of great places we were excited to try for dinner. We must have walked up and down the street for the first place about 5 times. We found the street, we were looking for number 12. we found 10,11, 13,14,15,16…no 12. I asked a local, they had never heard of the restaurant and pointed out that my book was printed in 2006, so it was waaaay out of date. We decided to find the next one. Initially we couldn’t find the street because the map in Frommers was wrong. Once we find the place that Frommers had raved about as an amazing experience, we quickly decided there must have been a mistake. The food was old and disgusting and it just didn’t look good. We finally settled on a restaurant that was near (if not in) the location of the first place (across from a place called Koukolos). It was ok.
For drinks we walked through a magical door in Koukolos and onto a seemingly hidden street that was full of music, bars, people and fun. It was ridiculous. It was similar to Lan Qui Fong (I am sure I butchered that) in Hong Kong, just wall to wall bars and people. We found a great place sitting out side at the Orient and ordered drinks. It was a fantastic end to the night.


* Most of you weren’t there, but I can assure you that it was awfully slow, not much fun to drive, nor much fun to watch. On top of my general out-of-shape-ness, I was also sporting hair down the back of my neck and hadn’t quite figured out how to wear baseball caps. I was also listening to a lot of Poison and Metallica and Skid Row (I loved skid row). It wasn’t a great period for me. Incidentally, my overall lack of writing skills can be attributed to my horrendous 8th grade English teacher – Mrs. Beam. I learned literally nothing from her. It’s a shame if she’s still teaching. She has single-handedly ruined the writing skills of an entire class of kids from Marion, Ia.