Yesterday, Chris and I rented mopeds early in the day and rode around the the central part of Crete for most of the morning. It was quite an adventure to say the least. We started off going down and around the beautiful wine country along the coast of central Crete which was amazing. However, as the morning progressed, more traffic came on the road and it ended up being more difficult to stick together. At one point we somehow ended up on the expressway zooming along on our little mopeds at about 80 km/h. It was borderline insane to say the least and we are probably lucky to be alive considering that was the first time either of us had ever drove a moped. At about 12:30 we made it back to the hotel and at that point we had rode our mopeds for about 4 hours straight including about a half an hour to forty five minutes on the highway (which is much more stressful).
During the afternoon, Chris and I split up for a while and I wandered around the neighborhood near our hotel. One thing that we consistently laughed about was how profoundly impossible it was to navigate Heraklion (central Crete) using a map. Their roads seem to go in every direction and randomly change names at the most inopportune times. Another thing that was also frustrating was that all their street signs are written in greek letters and all the maps they printed have roman letters, so they frequently don't even come close to matching.
However, remarkably, after walking for a bit, you always seem to end up where you wanted to go. This is most likely because it's not that big of a city, but we have the running joke that it's because of magical Cretan wormholes. A day ago we walked around the city looking for a particular fountain that had five lion heads on it. After walking for about a half an hour we managed to come across it. However, when we wandered about yesterday we found that same fountain in the same public square was only two blocks from our hotel. In all the cities on all the islands we have visited so far, navigation hasn't been a problem at all. But in Crete it seems like you can walk down one road at different times of the day and end up in a different place each time. It's almost comical.
So our new slogan for Crete is.... "Come to the island of Crete... where you'll always get where you're going".
One thing that we really loved about this stop was it's authenticity. Where we were staying on this island wasn't as touristy as other islands. You rarely heard people speaking anything but Greek and the atmosphere really made it seem like a small grecian city instead of a tourist destination.
All in all it was a fun day but I learned a few things about myself and the island of Crete.
1) I'm not really a motorcycle/moped guy
2) Drivers in Greece are pretty much all insane and drive however they want.
3) Crete has magical teleporting wormholes everywhere.
Our next stop is Mykonos for a couple days and then Corfu. We're currently riding the FlyingCat 4 zipping across the Aegean Sea towards another new and exciting city.
