For our last full day in Chania, Crete we ended up with an unexpected free day. Our boat plans derailed, we all slept in and then took the girls back into Chania’s old town. We walked out along the sea wall to the lighthouse and enjoyed the views of the Venetian harbor. On the walk back we looked up to find an incredibly welcome sight: clouds!! Ahhhh, a cloudy day with glorious shade!!
Sleeping beauty
Chania’s harbor- note the clouds in the distance- the only clouds we’ve seen in two weeks.
Walking to the lighthouse
In the harbor we were treated to a special surprise when we came up to a small group of people looking down into the water and saw a HUGE loggerhead sea turtle swimming around in the harbor! It was easily as long as Melina is tall. The biggest sea turtle we have ever seen! We watched it for about 10 minutes. Zach pointed out the irony of how if our boat trip wasn’t canceled we probably would not have seen a sea turtle. I wish there was a good frame of reference in this photo to show the size, but this will have to do.
Loggerhead in the harbor!
We set off to find a local patisserie mentioned in our guide book that is famous for its bougatsa, a cheese pastry. The place was jam packed with locals and the only thing you can buy there is bougatsa, which they serve with water. We planned to find seats but my terrible Greek led the cashier to wrap up our bougatsa to-go, so we carried it to a park bench and devoured it there. I had expected a sweet cottage-cheese type filling but instead it was more like a mixture of mozzarella and feta, not sweet at all except for the sugar poured all over the top. We all liked it and it was gone before it had a chance to cool down!
Bougatsa
To walk off our cheese pie we explored the western side of the harbor which was a lot more atmospheric and less crowded than the south side. And then of course, more views.
Octopus in the harbor
Pretty storefront
After a very nice seafood lunch we headed back to the villa for some rest and pool time. We talked and laughed and cleaned out the fridge in the ultimate Greek smorgasbord dinner.
This has been such an amazing trip! Tomorrow we say goodbye to family and spend our last full day exploring Herklion and the ruins of ancient Knossos before heading back to Athens on an overnight boat ride. Hopefully I’ll be able to write one more entry before we return to the “real world”, which seems pretty unreal lately.
Traveling Together 