Greece is neece

Rhyming-Mon has spoken.

Why did D. and I choose Greece? Because Africa, where we had planned to go originally, turned out to be rather expensive and my car expired two weeks ago (a sad story, by the way). Yes, it's no good form to start a sentence with because but that's just how I went about it, so deal.

Anyway, Greece it was. And it was really fun and relaxing. I can heartily recommend it. We went to Rethymnon, which is a small town in the North of Crete. Booked it on the internet (hey, we're Generation X, we have to). Last minute, too and it was rather on the cheap side. The price of the vacation, not the hotel. The hotel was great: The Minos Hotel. It was clean, the food was good, and there weren't too many German tourists - I reckon if I want to spend my vacation among Germans I might also stay at home.

Instead, there were lots of European tourists, nationality of which to be recognized by the various pieces of football apparel worn. There was a marked prevalence of English people, but that might also be attributed to the prevalence of English football fans within the English population.

We spent most of our time at the beach - relaxing WAS the aim of our vacation, after all. Once we planned an excursion to Knossos (Minos Palace! Highly historical!!) which was timed rather exquisitely as that happened to be the only slightly cloudy day. Knossos wasn't worth it, though: there's really nothing there to see, so the Greek have put up a couple of plaster pillars and some fake vase. Not really exciting, that.

At least we could gladly spend our days at the beach, the only other things we did was visit the local fortress (more spectacular than Knossos, in any case) and then do a trip to the Samaria Gorge. That was rather sporty of us: 16 kms, 1200 metres downwards. On the day itself we managed that in 4,5 hrs and were rather proud of us. On the next day, however, that had changed to excruciating pain; there was no way we could manage to move any slope that vaguely sloped downwards, let alone walk down stairs.

As I type this, I still vaguely feel cramps in my calves - whoa! Good thing we went home the day after, though I could have stayed on the beach for another couple of weeks. At least I got a lot of reading done. That and crossword puzzles. I always do crossword puzzles at the beach.

I really don't want to go to work tomorrow. Blech. Work includes lots of travelling around at the moment and I'd rather not. Oh well, at least I have work.

Oh, and regarding the vacation, if you'd like to see pictures, click here!!