- Walked the city perimeter along old Venetian ramparts
- Pondered vagaries of Greek parking
- Kids join Cypriot protest rally
- R & R
- My newfound love - Greek laundromats
Cretan parking
To a Cretan, a parking bay is at best, a suggestion. Imagine driving down a busy road, realizing you need to stop so you stop and park. Freeway? Sure, stop. Busy traffic behind you, stop. You know how as a pedestrian, you cross at an intersection and sorta jog walk to show the car you are grateful, in Crete you get out of your car, and dawdle (slower the better) and under no circumstance acknowledge the presence of any traffic now stuck behind you as you "go about your business".
Parking variations include
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| Low degree of difficulty: The double park block manoeuvre (blue car top left is driving on the road) |
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| Low deree of difficulty: Park up the parked cars bum manoeuvre |
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| High degree of difficulty: Park your truck in the middle of the road manoeuvre (note standard, low degree of difficulty, double parking) |
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| Moderate degree of difficulty: block the black car by crossing the street manouevre |
Thirsty?
Why not get a drink from a roadside kiosk "k-yosk". Note the second row choice. Ree's Diet Coke addiction or maybe a Vodka?
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| Smirnoff? |
Dirty laundry
- Walk up the street to what looks like the dry cleaners
- Give them a bag of dirty laundry - what size bag you ask (I asked). Any size.
- Stroll back a few hours later and get your washed, dried, somehow freshly lemon scented and folded clean clothes.
- Cost 6 bucks.
- Sensational.
What to do on concrete steps?
Obvious - plant a tree! This perplexes me. The why? The how? Cannot figure out how the tree is surviving. The stairs are very old.
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| Tree growing in conCRETE |
A few images of Heraklion
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| Looking north from old Venetian battlements |
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| What do you do with beautiful old wall if you want to make a road? Make a tunnel? Go under the wall? Go over the wall? Nopes, you just knock it down! |
Liberation or lunchbreak?
While we sat down to eat our now customary "Dunch" meal - or "Linner" if you like - about 4pm in one of the mini main squares of Heraklion. A group of very happy, young, dark haired, student types were assembling nearby. One of them had a loud hailer which he was using with reckless abandon and others were yelling all kinds of instructions to anyone who would listen - which didn't appear to be anyone.
At some point one of them came over to ask us in broken English if we would like to help them send a message to Turkey that Cyprus would be quite interested in being liberated. This was to be achieved by various people (largely tourists eating lunch and non-Cypriots, almost all wearing converse sneakers) standing close together and holding large cards up in the air that, when combined and in the right order, created an enormous map of Cyprus and some unintelligible words.
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| Converse - for, the discerning protestors footwear, look no further. |
Lozza was sorely tempted to suggest that they (Cypriots) may better use their time lining up at their bank to get a few percentage points of their savings before there money goes bye-bye, or telling them to stop blaming the Turks as Cyprus was pretty stuffed when the Turks moved in. He decided instead to eat his Souvlaki sans meat (something is lost) and watch quietly as it is said in an old saying (?Koran) "A Cypriot's passions may be easily raised by a sarcastic Aussie".
On a rooftop nearby a cameraman and photographer were capturing this work of political art. So the kids (expert protesters in their own right) said "sure" and went over to be allocated their respective bits of map. Turns out Drew's arms were a bit short to accurately depict a portion of the south of Cyprus and a strapping lad went in to hold him a bit higher up.
Finally there was much applauding and whooping and it seemed the mission was accomplished. Immediately thereafter everyone went straight to the nearest kebab store and ordered a gyro and a beer and sat about laughing. Seems the protest movement in this part of the world has cheered up a bit. Best of luck Cyprus. Happy to help.
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| View from the Souvlaki shop |
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| "What IS Cyprus Mum?" |
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| Drew supporting the south |
Other stuff
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| Must have a flashing light toy o'copter / weapon thing |
Tomorrow we leave Heraklion for a 3hr bus trip to Chania. Reminds me of the old Boney M song, "Chania bom bom bom Chania" or something like that?
Enough
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