six legged 30 toe monster - holiday day 7

As already mentioned here, the holidays are the best part of the year, what I feel I work all year for, a moment to see something new, meet people, relax in the sun, eat great food and sometimes even not have to cook it myself.

I have met many people during this holiday, the English ex pat who moved here while his mother remained in England suffering from dementia and who is finding retirement actually quite difficult, a very nice Greek fellow who works to look after the loggerhead turtles on the beach, who explained the whole process and nicely indicated a brilliant restaurant, several people who were patiently awaiting the end of the season, apparently it has not been a good season but the most revelaing conversation I found was with a woman who worked at the car rental place we used.

She seemed a very positive person and we had quite a long chat as I took number 1 son for a walk. She told me how she was very worried as her husband was retired and as the season had been tough she wasn't sure how things would be next year. I actually thought she was going to break down in tears as she mentioned the fact that the olive trees on the plot of land next to her shop were going to bear hardly any olives. I didn't want to probe but I'm assuming that they sell olives but I can't imagine that they would get much for the crop, maybe it is like a winter bonus. SUch a genuine woman and her heart is obviously in the right place, she reflected the concerns of many these days regarding global financial uncertainty.

The day ended in spectacular fashion and slightly by accident. We wandered down to the local beach, hitherto a bit short of sand. The weather had calmed down and the water had receded to reveal more sand and more importantly the girls saw some fish swimming. Within 3 minutes, I had convinced everyone with the sun on the point of setting that we simply had to all go swim in the sea and see the fish, which is precisely what we did. I ran back to the hotel, got wet swimming costumes, towels, goggles and bread and we ran into the lovely warm Med. Seriously if anyone living in Crete or on a Greek island wants to do a house swap, we are interested.

So we swam with fish they came and ate our bread and it was the perfect end to our holiday.

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