ALEXI’S Hotel, Crete

When I was younger, much of my family lived in Vancouver. My uncles played baseball in summer and hockey in winter and at some point, they started visiting a Greek restaurant that I always thought of as a pizza place, called Alexi’s. When visiting from Calgary as a child, it always felt a little secret; the restaurant had no front window, you had to walk down a little alley and enter the door behind a travel agency on Broadway Avenue. We would go at least once every Christmas holiday and summer vacation until I finished high school. We knew the owner (Alexi, obviously) by name and I celebrated many birthdays there. Visiting Alexi’s is as much a part of my childhood as anything could be.

Driving on Crete

I booked a car for July 12 before I knew what I’d do with it. My original thought was that maybe I’d drive to Knossos and then look around a bit. Parking didn’t seem to be an issue, but when I looked at tours, it was almost half the price of renting the car. I kept the rental, though, and decided on just a good, old fashioned road trip. I looked at a map, searched for “archaeological sites” and got some ideas.

The start of Crete

No major hiccups on our flight. We were not able to check in online so had to wait to check in at Edelweiss and as Edelweiss’ computers were down, we waited over an hour to move 20 feet in line as they had to check everyone in manually. When the computers were back up, we just raced through but it was almost an hour and a half start to finish but as we were about to do in 9 hours what used to take two weeks to a month, I was okay. We were worried the flight would leave late, and it did, but we had a great tail wind and arrived in Zurich as intended. While there is a flight direct to Chania from Zurich, the timing was such that it left an hour after our intended arrival and because it only goes a few times a week, we’d have been stuck if late, so our schedule was Calgary-Zurich-Athens-Chania. We had 6 hours total scheduled in Zurich so we went to the Transit Hotel, got rooms and napped until 6:30 local time, after which we went for an all day breakfast (eggs and bacon) and espresso before heading for our gate.

Unwinding in the old world

“You travel well,” said Maria, the woman who ran the B&B where I stayed in Sardinia. When someone who basically talks to travelers all the time says something like that, it’s a compliment you don’t want to take lightly. The comment came while we were talking about my plans for after I left the B&B and went to Cagliari. Maria asked me what I planned to do with the car after I got to town. I knew I wouldn’t need it in town and my plan was to drive to Barumini to see the Nuraghe, come back to Cagliari, check in to my hotel, then drop off the car. I answered, “I’m going to drop off the car when I arrive.” It was then that she made the comment.

Italian beach holiday, baby!

Interesting experience, flying Calgary to Zurich, and Zurich to Cagliari, when Calgary/Cagliari are pronounced almost identically, just with a difference in “g”. The Sardinian city sounds like “cal-yaree” which is pretty much how Sardinians pronounce “Calgary”.

Planning, or not, as the case may be

I don’t usually plan a trip beyond booking a flight and place to stay. In the few weeks before I leave, I usually start looking at activities on Expedia or somewhere, and if I find something I like that requires tickets, I’ll book it, but generally I’m just wandering around when I get somewhere. I like an organic experience and I think maybe I don’t want to feel scheduled and planning is scheduling so I avoid it and it all seems to work out in the end, although when I went to New York City in 2016, I totally forgot to visit the Empire State Building.