Into town...

I know I didn't write yesterday, but it was sort of a lazy day. I think I had some type of allergy/sun rash thing going on, and so yesterday was officially my recovery day; I stayed out of the sun, started, and almost finished, a nook book. It felt a little weird not to hold my camera and take pictures, so I took a few random ones.

Here is part of my sun rash. The photo didn't turn out that well, so I tried to enhance it a bit. It was on both arms, both legs, and most severely on my collar bones. I have a feeling it's a combination of my penicillin, and going from absolutely no sun to straight sun exposure for hours a day. I have actually tossed my penicillin out because yesterday morning when I went to take one, it smelled funny. I didn't take one, and opened it again hours later to do another smell-test, and it smelled even worse! It smelled sort of like vinegar-ammonia. Since I know drugs can go bad, and possibly have an odor to them, and this isn't how penicillin is supposed to smell, I figure it's safer to get rid of it than to keep taking it.

I decided I would take a few pictures of our dishes/food. We have honey, bread, tomatoes, and oranges. I feel pretty healthy whenever I prepare something now, because we don't prepare much at a time, and it's fairly healthy for you.

Here is our fridge. We have our hostesses cheese, feta cheese, 1.5% milk (we can only get it in quarts and liters), olives, water bottles, lunch meat, yogurt, and Mythos beer, and ice cream bars (such a good treat by the pool). These last three pictures were pretty much the extent of our photography yesterday!

Today was Dion and his mothers last day on Crete! We will definitely miss our random meals together, tennis, backgammon... and just sitting in the lobby and chatting. They were so kind as to drive us into Agios Nikolaos on their way to the airport and give a mini tour. We have Dion's email address, and Diane requested me to find her or email her my facebook and keep them both in touch with the rest of our travels. They also were also very kind in extending an invitation for Brandon and me to see them if we ever come to England. This creates a bigger incentive to visit Europe again. We will see. We have to be practical, after all. (It's still fun to dream though!)

So to get our Agios Nikolaos vacation really kicked off we stopped for a hot and cold Greek coffee (the cold is called a frappe).

Brandon and I are trying to get a little better at taking pictures of people. Here are some retired gentlemen sipping coffee and talking. They are at every single cafe we walk by. I wonder what they talk about?

I thought this was a great snapshot. It shows just how much the Greeks value small forms of transportation. They might have a semi full of onions and potatoes somewhere else on the island, but we have yet to see it! Instead we see small pick-up trucks weighted down with a full load of the produce.

Here is one of the streets we walked down in Agios Nikolaos. You can see the cafes and shops on both sides of the street.

This is a little lake that is surrounded by Agios Nikolaos. It's great source of pride for the locals, and includes a lot of history according to legend.

Here is a panoramic view of the lake, Lake Voulismeni. According to legend, Artemis and Athena washed their hair in the lake. Legend also states that it is bottomless. It turns out it's not bottomless, but it is 64 meters deep, and only 137 meters wide, so there is a foundation to the claims of it's endless limit.

This is where we took the previous picture. We sat at this little cafe and sipped some Greek coffee while we snapped random pictures and talked about... not really anything. It's was a pretty good morning.

As we started walking back to the hotel I spied this hibiscus plant. It's blooming on a little side residential street. It looks effortless, doesn't it? I wonder how much cultivation it took, or whether it just happened their naturally.

Another picture on our way back to the hotel. The sea is so crystal clear. We think there are a lot of sea urchins in the water, but we haven't been down to investigate yet.

Another picture of the sea from Agios Nilolaos.

This is the gas station that Brandon and I would get gas for the rental car. They pump the gas for you, which is a little strange for us, but maybe that's just the way it is in this part of Greece. Anyway, the flowers and roses that bloom seem a little ridiculous! This gas station has more color and blooms than many houses we come across! The roses here on Crete also seem to have dozens of flowers blooming at one time, while we struggle to get three roses to bloom at one time at home. (Except on the carpet roses.)

Not sure what tomorrow holds for us. I think I will try to stay out of the sun for a little while longer, but Brandon and I plan another trip to town.

Until then, goodnight!