Wednesday, December 4/2013
Moving day. Just when we'd got really efficient about living here. Learned to go outside to the koulouri lady at the corner to buy two koulouria to upgrade the breakfast. Found the best of the three spanakopita sellers on Zinonos and made friends. Learned the central streets without a map. Oh well.
Metro to the airport. Takes close to an hour. There are gypsies "entertaining" for money in the carriages. The accordion music is cheerful enough. The depressing thing is that the children (there was more than one pair consisting of accordion playing young man and child collecting contributions in a plastic cup) were young - probably between seven and thirteen - and ought to have been in school and neither the Roma community nor the authorities seem to wish to enforce this. The other passengers ignored the musicians but the young woman sitting opposite did give two coins to an older Greek woman who came past speaking softly and holding out her hand.
At the airport we display our boarding passes and the girl is polite about our first time ever downloaded mobile device scannable boarding passes but says she'll print us some - because it's easier. The promised 60 minutes free wifi at Athens airport doesn't materialise. Well, the little circle spins valiantly but to no avail. Leading us, of course, to think of a number of things that it is vital to find out before we land in Crete. The flight itself is all ascent and descent with a quick cup of coffee and a biscuit squeezed in. Fly in over a dark sea that is so scattered with white that I think, impossibly, of snow. But no, it's white caps and waves breaking wildly over rocks and shoals - a beautiful navigational nightmare.
Extremely lucky on landing. Suitcases through quickly. Bus arrives fifteen minutes after luggage claimed - and it was impossible to ascertain from the internet which, if any, of the schedules and dire warnings were to be believed. The driver speaks English, the bus goes to the station, and the station is a ten minute walk from our new home, Morfeas Nest. It's on a narrow cobbled street that can have changed little in the last several centuries. Too dark to explore tonight.
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