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Early Morning Walk
We spent the day in our holiday resort of Agia Pelagia, and indeed, mainly at our hotel. Well, it was our first day, and everyone was a bit pooped after spending most of the previous day traveling.
I’d sort of set myself the target of going for a walk each morning on this holiday on days when we’re not going somewhere else. This was the first of these. The plan was to walk to nearby geocaches first thing in the morning. That way, it wouldn’t be so hot (I hoped) and the ladies wouldn’t miss me.
There’s a beach about 500m from the hotel as the crow flies. However, I’m well known for not being a crow, so I had to take the road. The walk down is a shade over a kilometre, but of course it’s all downhill. This is true of most of Crete. The journey to the actual sea from anywhere more than 100m away invariably involves going down a steep hill. There are some slightly flatter bits, but not many. Crete is mainly composed of mountains surrounded by sea. Wherever there’s a relatively flat bit, there’s a large town.
Agia Pelagia isn’t on a relatively flat bit, and therefore isn’t a large town. It’s more of a spread-out village. I suspect most of the buildings here have low occupancy during the winter. Maybe we should try coming back then. It might be cooler and easier to get around.
Going Downhill Rapidly
Back at the plot, I walked down first to a little church that should have been the start point for a geocache. I couldn’t find it and was a bit spooked by loads of workmen nearby, so I left it. From here it took about 10 minutes down to the beach, and there I found my first ever geocache in Greece. 5 minutes later I found my second one, at the location of the first photo on this post. By this time it was beginning to look a lot like breakfast, so I started my way back up.
The walk up took somewhat longer, even without me stopping at the church to have a second pop at the multi-geocache. On the way up, I did a Bono ‘cos I still couldn’t find what I was looking for. I did find the container, but sadly it didn’t contain all the required information.
Before Lunch
By the time I got back up to the top of the hill it was well into breakfast time, so I met up with the girls and we went off to see what the restaurant could offer. As with dinner, it was a substantial buffet affair with multiple options. Plenty of choice for even the pickiest of eaters, of which we have at least two.
After breakfast the kids fancied a dip in the pool. I didn’t. So off they went and I laid on the bed for a snooze. I guess that’s an advantage of being in a resort hotel with slightly older kids. Everyone is at liberty to do what they want, even if what they want is to snooze.
By midday the girls had obviously had enough of the pool and wanted to relocate to the restaurant again. That was fine with me.
More of the Same
After lunch I needed some more snoozing. I’d been suffering from an industrial strength headache since we arrived. The kids went for the snoozing option too until about 4pm.
We discovered also that my phone company’s “unlimited” data allowance doesn’t cover when you’re abroad. If you want that, then you have to pay them a fiver a day once you’ve used 12Gb. That’s not a problem for me, but it means that the ladies of the house will be purchasing lots of upgrades to allow them to keep streaming videos.
At about 4pm we decided then it was time to walk down to the supermarket for some ice creams and more water for the rooms. On the way, we went down to the little church to put the proper set of information into the multi-cache I’d attempted earlier. The CO had given me permission to replace it (and had told me what information to add).
Dinner
We had dinner sitting outside on the terrace, staring out at the sea. We decided to make a bit of a plan for the rest of the holiday, so we knew what we were intending to do (or not do) on each day. Venus prefers it that way. I do too in some ways, if only because it allowed me to think about what days we’d need a car and what days we wouldn’t. To be honest though, we were all still too tired to organise any of it, and there was a hint of grumpiness in the air.