The Labyrinthine Wedding – Day 9

Today was our second of two “free” days in Crete, but none of us was in any rush to get up and enjoy it.  We slept in until 11:00 a.m. and then dragged ourselves out of bed to meet my wife’s cousins near the beach for lunch.  Unfortunately, it took longer than we expected, because there was an open market in the village, which shut down the main road…and consequently the only road that we could use to reach my mother-in-law’s apartment.  We tried several different ways, but we were always turned back by a barricade.  And because of the stupid design of the roads in the village, which are one way only, we ended up literally driving in circles for over an hour.  We finally managed to find a way through after the market started breaking down.

We met my wife’s cousins at a restaurant in Matala, near the beach that we had gone to on Thursday.  The restaurant was known for a few things, but namely their brick oven pizza, which is what I got.  Since Greek was exclusively spoken at the table the entire time, this lunch was really about my wife catching up with family that she hadn’t seen in years.  So, I tried to entertain Troy.  Unfortunately, he was completely enamored with the stray cats that were wandering around the café looking for food.  I tried to dissuade him, but he was obsessed, and the cats seemed to enjoy the attention as well.  Troy didn’t finally leave them alone until one of them scratched him.

After that, we headed over to Komos Beach, which was another beach with beautiful views of the sunset, to cool off and swim.  Troy played with my wife’s cousin’s kids (his second cousins?) on the beach, building a sandcastle, while my wife and I floated in the cool, clear water.  The beach was larger and more spread out than the Matala beach, so it didn’t feel as crowded.  However, there was a rock shelf just off the shoreline that made walking in the water difficult.  The waves were also pretty strong, and both my wife and I got swept off our feet right onto the hard rock shelf below.  It wasn’t too bad once you got out deeper into the sea, and I got a beautiful view of the sun setting into the water in front of me.  Then, in the twilight light, Troy and I splashed around a little in the waves near the shore before it got completely dark.

We went back to the apartment for a quick shower and change of clothes before heading out to dinner with the wedding party at around 10:30 p.m.  There were several kids there, so Troy wanted me to take him to the courtyard across the street near the little church to play with them.  He ended up finding Gwenny, as well as another cute English-speaking brunette named Eleni, and the three of them played chase and ran from imaginary zombies and snakes.  It was eerily like watching Troy play with Misha and Sasha.

After dinner, a few of us went back to my brother-in-law’s villa to help them eat their wedding cake.  Troy and Nikolas, another little boy about the same age, were being entertained by my new sister-in-law, and I had to pry him away to finally leave and head back to our apartment.

For some stupid reason, my mother-in-law booked us on an early flight in the morning back to Athens, so we’re going to be dead tomorrow.  We need to leave by 6:30 a.m., so after we’d packed our suitcases and finally went to bed it was around 3:30 a.m.  Here’s to three hours of sleep!