Crete, a food blog and on to Italy!

So, we're ending the first leg of our journey, which means saying YAH-sas (Goodbye) to Greece. A word of advice: Stay away from Greece in January, as many attractions close for the winter months. We walked around quite a few deserted Greek towns, particularly on the island of Crete. In one place we went to, a tumbleweed actually rolled down the main drag, in front of all the closed-up shops in the middle of the day. However, it's a beautiful country and could certainly use your tourism dollars in these tough times. We'd love to return, perhaps when more is happening. 

Here are a few photos from our time in Crete, as well as one from Patras, where we boarded the ferry. 

Sunset in Patras, the last city in Greece we visited. ED 

This severed pig head was just dangling from the ceiling in a butcher shop. The guy offered to pose with it. PL 

An abandoned shop in Chania, Crete. ED

 This is the beach in Kissamos, Crete. It was pouring when we got there, so we sought shelter under an umbrella. ED

This is at the harbor in Chania, Crete. A few restaurants lined this walkway along the 500-year-old city wall, and one or two of them were good. PL

We had a bit of bad luck with rain in a quite a few instances. Despite our misfortune, this rainbow followed us all over the island. PL 

This guy was burning olive branches in the countryside of Knossos in Crete. He was also decapitating doves.  ED

And here's Emma's food post from our best dining experience in Greece. It was cheap, tasty and authentic. Sure wish we could remember the name.

As we were wandering through Chania, we happened upon this place, identified only by it's symbol, a little red house with a spoon sticking out of it's open roof. Luckily for us the daily dishes, scrawled on a chalkboard in Greek, were also visible from the open kitchen. The waiter welcomed us in and opened the lids of huge metal pots to show and briefly describe their contents. Among the options: Chicken burger stuffed with vegetables(aka meatloaf), cabbage stuffed with rice, zucchini and veal, Octopus in beans and cod and potato stew. We settled on the white zucchini stuffed with rice and veal with parsley and lemon cream sauce, oven roasted potatoes and lamb in a tomato sauce, lentil salad with feta, tomato and red onion, and accidentally, a delicious salad with fennel and mixed greens in balsamic dressing with a grilled fresh cheese, somewhat similar to mozzarella. Pat also ordered a greek beer called Alpha, which even I liked. Good, good and better. There's an inherent benefit in having the freedom to change your menu everyday. The cook can take advantage of whatever fresh ingredients are available that day and though it could be exhausting to come up with new dishes everyday(though they probably don't have to) it also wards off boring boredom which can manifest itself in the food. 

Our waiter brought us a small plate of yogurt with honey of which they produce a lot in Crete and a bottle of Raki(a strong liquor). Thinking we were supposed to drink it all, we finished our dessert and raki before realizing that other tables left their bottles about three quarters full. Oh well! The yogurt here is AMAZING! Though we have greek style yogurt in the US, the authentic item is excellent. It's creamy and slightly tangy and rich and it makes me wonder why other types of yogurt even bother to exist. Oh, the yogurt! 

This was a selection of children's Christmas paintings inside the restaurant. Most all featured snow, though we suspect none of those kids have ever seen the stuff up close, considering it was T-shirt weather (when it wasn't raining) during our mid-January time there. 

 And now we're on the ferry to Bari, Italy, where I have an interview lined up with a couple of young Italian activists. Should be good. We're planning (tentatively at best) to visit Napoli, Rome, Florence and Cinque Terre. We could definitely use some advice, if you have any.

Our home for the next 16 hours.