October 26, 2003

European Vacation Part 10: Agia Gahlini.

Sunday morning we got up early and decided to hop in the car and drive down to the south side of the island to check out two beaches: Aglia Galini (pronounced Ah-yah Guh-LEEny) and Matala.

chris a, fatty, grant, me — Here's us bright and early out on our front porch enjoying a breakfast of Greek yogurt and granola. Mmmmmmmm. (ps - what's up, busted dudes in the morning?)

With the Fatty at the wheel, we hit the road.

As the crow flies, Agia Galini isn't far from Rethymnon.

However, Crete is crazy mountainous in the middle and what we figured would be a 45 minute drive, turned into a hour and forty-five minute epic.

At one point, we were driving with the windows down laughing and talking and all of sudden a pack of (incredibly loud) motorcyles screamed past us doing well over 130 MPH. I managed to get my camera out in time to catch the tail end of the last rider as he sped past us.

Ah! We made it! The elusive southern shore of Crete!

More pics from the car as we followed the windy road down the mountains through town...

...and eventually to a parking lot right next to the gravel-sand beach of Aglia Galini.

fatty — We gathered up our beach stuff and headed across the inlet over to a deserted part of the beach.

chris a, fatty, grant — Where we proceeded to throw down group beach coldlamps, awww yeah. Check out all the rocks on the beach. The waves there made the craziest sound. Each time the water washed out back towards to ocean, it would drag all of the smaller rocks across the larger rocks on the bottom and make this bizarre, underwater rumbling noise. After a quick swim, we laid down to dry off in the sun and were all quickly lulled to sleep by the sound of the water.

Fatty's artsy depth-of-field picutre of the nearby town taken over a rock on the beach.

chris a, me — After our busy day of swimming and napping, we headed over to one of the nearby beach restaurants for some lunch. Chris and me.

fatty, grant — Grant and The Fatty.

fatty, grant — Seriously, what's better than lunch in Crete? Check out the apps: Two Greek salads, Spanakopita (flaky Greek phyllo dough filled with spinach and feta), and tzatziki (which is yogurt with olive oil, dill and more garlic that you've ever tasted in anything before ever). Soooooo fucking tasty. Holy shit, I almost just drooled on myself captioning this picture.

chris a — And for one of the main courses: Fresh octipi! Tenticliscous!

fatty — Fatty taking a self-portrait of his puffy beach-hair Jew-fro. Suh-weet!

grant — Just in case you were wondering where Grant scored that hat.

After lunch, we packed up our gear and headed to the car so we could check out the beach over at Matala before sunset.