crete

October 29, 2003

Awesome, right?

October 29, 2003

scenic overlook ↗+

Here's us heading down the mountain the caves are on back into the village of Melidoni.

October 29, 2003

scooter ↗+

The main room of the caves from the top of the lower stairs.

October 29, 2003

cave ↗+

...I claimed I wanted to get a picture of these three on their way down, but it was really just my sneaky was of getting them to go first in case there were any ScoobyDoo-esque villians waiting below.

October 29, 2003

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...and we continued on our way. Here's Chris' pic of him about to pass me on the open road.

October 29, 2003

me ↗+
scooter ↗+

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"Easy Rider Goes to Crete." Click here for the hi-res version

October 29, 2003

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Another one. Check out the way the clouds are being dragged over the mountain top on the right. Click here for the hi-res version

October 29, 2003

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These tiny pics really don't do the mountains in the background justice. Click here to open a hi-res version in a new window.

October 29, 2003

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Grant in front of the entrance to the cloisters.

October 29, 2003

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After a few kilometers of dirt roads, we hit another beautifully paved backroad.

October 29, 2003

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After a long climb up a steep road, we paused to admire the view.

October 29, 2003

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We hit the road again and after a lovely thirty-minute windy ride through all sorts of crazy-ass mountain terrain, we arrived at the Arkadia Monestary: which is one of Crete's most celebrated monuments of resistance against the mid-19th century Turkish occupation.

October 29, 2003

museum ↗+

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How did Megadeth manage to never write a song about this?

October 29, 2003

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...before racing over to the cases and posing for pictures with the skulls of bad-ass, martyred Cretans who blew themselves up in order to take out some Turks.

October 29, 2003

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Me in front of a Venitian arch.

October 29, 2003

me ↗+
scooter ↗+

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Durning a stretch of road, we noticed all these old ruin up on a hill and turned off the main road to explore.

October 29, 2003

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Our bellies full of warm doughnut, we hit the open road. We decided to take a 45 km backroads trip to check out the bad-ass Arkadi Monastery and then from there, if we had enough light, ride another 25 km and check out the Melidoni Caves.

October 29, 2003

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We saddled back up on our HOGGZ and hit the road. We only managed to get about 1/4 mile when Grant, who was leading the pack, slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road hysterically laughing and pointing...

european vacation part 15: relaxing.

October 29, 2003

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After all the condo hijinx, we hopped into the car and drove to the northwestern town of Hania for some dinner. After parking the car, we walked over to the Venetian Harbor. Here's the eerily lit Djamassi mosque built by when the Turks after they invaded and toppled Venitian rule in 1645.

October 28, 2003

church ↗+

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As we sat finishing our lunch and drinking a few cups of coffee and relaxing, Grant walked Tymber back to our car so she could get her bag out of it and bid her farewell. We met back up, did a little bit of walking around the town...

european vacation part 15: relaxing.

October 28, 2003

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We got into town, parked the car and walked over to the closed club. Minutes later, true to her word, Tymber showed up right on time. We all headed back to the car, and decided, despite the threatening clouds, to head to the beach and take a swim. I dropped Tymber and Grant off at the beach across the street from our resort and went to park the car. By the time I made it back to the beach, it had began raining and I showed up just in time to catch...

european vacation part 15: relaxing.

October 28, 2003

We chatted Michael up for a few minutes and after we'd established a rapport, I asked him if I had any shot with his cute friend and he replied (please make sure you read the next sentence in your best Balki from "Perfect Strangers" voice) "Don' be ree-deek-you-los!"

european vacation part 14: the buddha cafe.

October 27, 2003

Here you can see Michael hi-fiving his friends ("And then I told them to fuck off before I kicked their American asses!") while my dreamgirl chats with her friend about how she wishes her friend would stop coming between her and her future husband.

european vacation part 14: the buddha cafe.

October 27, 2003

Crowd shot.

european vacation part 14: the buddha cafe.

October 27, 2003

bar ↗+
crowd ↗+

Amazing right? Who would've ever thought a random church would be more interesting than a freaking labyrinth that contained an evil bull/man hybrid? Here's Fatty's pic of me taking. . .

european vacation part 13: steak dinner.

October 27, 2003

church ↗+

After we all had showered, we headed into Rethymnon to find the steak restaurant we'd seen a few days earlier. While wandering around in search of it, we came across this really beautiful Greek Orthodox church and decided, after watching all the evening parishioners leave, to pop in and have a look.

european vacation part 13: steak dinner.

October 27, 2003

church ↗+

. . .this picture.

european vacation part 13: steak dinner.

October 27, 2003

church ↗+

Now this is cool. It's the oldest road in Europe. We followed it away from the tour and towards lunch.

October 27, 2003

museum ↗+

And a, um, tree.

October 27, 2003

museum ↗+

More stuff that might be old or not.

October 27, 2003

museum ↗+

And nope. No torture chamber either (Turns out the Minoans were an almost entirely peaceful civilization). We held out hope that there was at least a snack bar somewhere, but no such luck there either. There was however, a functional 5,000 year old plumbing system which our 80 year old tour guide told us she would demonstrate. For a second we were scared that she'd pop a squat right in front of us. But she just kind of pointed at it and told us how advanced the Minoans were. Obviously not advanced enough to leave some skulls or a torture chamber to cheer poor Fatty up.

October 27, 2003

museum ↗+

Okay, so get this. There is no labyrinth, there are no minotaurs and not only that, there never was a minotaur. The myth is really just like a really, really, really long game of telephone. Turns out there was a king, Minos who was strong and possessed a bullish personality. The palace had like tons of rooms. Before the roof was put on it kind of looked like a maze to bemused locals. That's your labyrinth.

October 27, 2003

museum ↗+

Prettier! After Grant gave up on trying to catch a peacock (we were actually rooting for him - we figured if he actually did manage to catch one, we'd be able to get some great shots of him getting the living shit pecked out of him), we hopped in the car and drove westward back to Rethymnon.

October 27, 2003

At the beginning of the tour, we were told that the palace ruins that we were exploring were from 3,000 BCE. So the whole time, we're walking around looking at this stuff in awe. Like "Wow this things been standing here for 5,000 years!" Then about halfway through the tour, our guide informed us that everything we'd been looking at was actually all reconstructed from piles of rocks discovered at the excavation site at the beginning of the 20th century.

October 27, 2003

museum ↗+

Behind the 5,000 year old palace there was once an inlet where dolphins frolicked. Here's a picture of them.

October 27, 2003

Yet another possible JDate photo opp for the Fatty. "Dude, it says to chicks 'I like culture and stuff' ". As handsome as he looks ladies, just keep in mind that moments after posing for this picture he ran off to "look for the torture chamber."

October 27, 2003

The nearby village at dusk.

October 26, 2003

See, it doesn't look far, right? Looking at the map we figured it would only be a half an hour, but because of the windy coastal roads, took us almost 90 minutes!

October 26, 2003

map ↗+

After the rock jumping photo session, Grant asked if I'd take some Bay Watchesque portraits of him.

October 26, 2003

Now the caves are a gated tourist attraction that you have to pay to be guided through. By the time we got there, the gates were closed so we weren't able to go up in them and explore. Fucking hippies. Always ruining it for everyone.

October 26, 2003

beach ↗+
cave ↗+

We parked the car and managed to get out on the beach with about fifteen minutes to spare before sunset. Matala is best known for the caves you see in the limestone rock in the background.

October 26, 2003

beach ↗+
cave ↗+

Three and a half (car sickness-inducing) hours later, we finally made it back to Rethymnon. We got back to our porch and were greeted by these two awesome stray cats. (Cretans really like cats and so there are stray cats all over the place that will come up to you and hang out for a while because they want to be fed and petted). So we gave them some milk.

October 26, 2003

cat ↗+

The beginning of sunset.

October 26, 2003

sunset ↗+

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

October 26, 2003

map ↗+

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

October 26, 2003

me ↗+
beach ↗+

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

October 26, 2003

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.

October 26, 2003

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

October 26, 2003

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

October 26, 2003

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.

October 26, 2003

driving ↗+

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

October 26, 2003

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

October 26, 2003

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.

October 26, 2003

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.

european vacation part 9: dinner with kostas vallassos.

October 26, 2003

...that she was only fourteen years old! Doh! Turns out her family owned the club and twice a week she worked the door to earn some extra money (ummm, her allowance, I guess). It was a little past 2am and we were all knackered from our long day of scootering (and too much wine at dinner) so we decided to pack it in early and head back to the resort. We arrived at our car to find Grant sprawled out across the backseat asleep...and decided to do what any friends in our situation would do: scare the living shit out of him. We all got on one side of the car and at the count of three started rocked the (tiny) car back and forth as hard as we could while screaming. Grant leapt awake (screaming along with us) and nearly soiled himself. I tried to take a pic of it, but the flash bounced off the car's glass and it didn't come out. Sorry.

October 25, 2003

The scooter rental place was near the fortress in downtown Rethymnon so after we picked up the keys, Chris and I decided to take an exploratory drive around the fort and through town.

european vacation part 9: dinner with kostas vallassos.

October 25, 2003

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On the scooter ride back towards Rethymnon, we saw this really neat, little roadside Chapel and pulled over to explore. These were all over the place in Crete. Little Chapels that you can just pull over and pray in. The best we could figure, they were there so when a crazy Greek driver kills a tourist on a scooter they can immediately pull over and make pennance.

October 25, 2003

church ↗+

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Forget Quadrophenia, we're taking this one back to the James Dean era. Here's Grant's portrait of me as "Rebel Without A Clue."

October 25, 2003

me ↗+
door ↗+

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...spend some time taking in the smell of olive trees and eucalyptus and enjoying the Cretan sunshine and the amazing view...

October 25, 2003

scenic overlook ↗+

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Afterwards we walked around the surrounding area...

October 25, 2003

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How tough is the Fatty in this pic? See that drop off behind Fatty in the pic? That's actually a steep road that leads down to this little tiny part of the penninsula that goes out into the water. We drove down to explore and take a closer look.

October 25, 2003

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...quickly digressed into another Sears' Catalog-inspired photo shoot. "Look! Over there!" "No! Look over there!"

October 25, 2003

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Fatty elected to kick it old school with a famous standby: "JC Penny Catalog Coldlamp #427."

October 25, 2003

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As the road continued to climb higher, the view got crazier and crazier.

October 25, 2003

scenic overlook ↗+

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And then after regrouping, we hopped on our scooters and drove up this crazy road that hugged the mountainous coastline of the Bali peninsula.

October 25, 2003

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After we were finished taking in the view, we decided it was high time that we took some shots of each of us pimping and coldlamping on our HOGGZ!

October 25, 2003

chris a ↗+

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Now here's the section where I would've posted the pics of me c-lampin' on my bike, but they don't exist. (I gave Grant my new cam to take pics of me and he thought the beeping noise my new cam makes each time it autofocuses meant that it was taking pics. He feels really bad and was worried that I was going to be all shitty about it here. But hey, it was an honest mistake.) So instead, here's another scenery pic (looking east). Wooo! After our photo sesh, we decided to head down to the beach and take a swim before checking out the rest of the Balí coastline.

October 25, 2003

beach ↗+

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Here's a pic from down on the beach facing west.

October 25, 2003

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After a quick dip, we packed up our stuff, bid a final farewell leer to our topless friends, and headed back to our hoggz to continue exploring the rest of Bali's coastline

October 25, 2003

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We parked our bikes and Chris and I set out on foot to check it out.

October 25, 2003

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Biiiiiiig guuuuuuuuy on a liiiiiiiiiitle biiiiiiiiike!

October 25, 2003

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Turns out, the highway was way less scary than the little road we'd been riding through town. On the little road, we were forced to ride in the sketchy, pothole ridden shoulder, where we constantly had to worry about cars pulling out in front of us and dogs that were running around in the street. But on the highway there was hardly any traffic and the shoulder was wide and smoothly paved. (By the way, you know you totally love my wind-styled Farrah Fawcett wings. They're the latest in cycling fashion.)

October 25, 2003

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The circle in the middle is our resort (outside of Rethymnon), the circle on the left is Hania, and the circle on the right is Balí.

October 25, 2003

map ↗+

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We hit the road and were headed for Balí when about three minutes into the trip Grant's bike stalled out and wouldn't restart. We all pulled over and a quick examination revealed that the liquid puddling underneath his bike was, in fact, gasoline. Yep, blown gas line. No big deal we figured. We'd all ride back and get Grant a new bike. Chris hopped on his bike to come with us, and his bike wouldn't restart either. FUCK! So Fatty and Chris agreed to wait 1/2 mile down the road while Grant and I went back to talk to the scooter guy.

October 25, 2003

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The road we were traveling ran through the mountainous, northern coastline of the island. Out the left window all we could see were mountains with rows of olive trees haphazardly planted. Out the right window were more scraggly mountains that dropped off right into the sea.

October 24, 2003

driving ↗+

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...and were totally blown away by the landscape.

October 24, 2003

grant ↗+

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Around midnight, we finally got motivated enough to all hop into the car and drive into downtown Rethymnon. We sat at an outdoor cafe right on the water, had some coffee and chocolate cake, then around 1am we started roaming the streets looking for some interesting bars or clubs to hit.

October 24, 2003

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Chris "The Greek" Apostalou...

October 24, 2003

chris a ↗+

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Brian "I want to dance with somebody" Battjer!

October 24, 2003

me ↗+
crowd ↗+

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Live Show gets the thumbsdown! Here's us in the parking lot trying to assess the financial damage. Our four Russian "strippers" managed to fleece the four of us for a grand total of €120 in less than 20 minutes! And we still didn't manage to see any heines! We hopped in the car to drive the remaing 1/4 mile back to our resort, and in the moment of silence after we were finished laughing hysterically at what had just happened we all heard Grant say quietly to himself: "Hmmmmm. A hundred Euros, eh?" Hahahahaha.

October 24, 2003

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With our hopes of banging tons of hot, slutty Greek girls utterly shattered, we moved on to another club (this one called Arabia) hoping to find some hot, slutty girls on vacation from elsewhere. Instead we were met with more hot Greek-girl indifference.

October 24, 2003

laser ↗+

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On the way back to the car a little after 3am, we found another sidewalk snack shop and decided to get something to eat. We all ended up ordering the Cretan equivalent of (my favorite bo-bo NYC food) the infamous Rosario's "Frankie and Cheese." (special shout out to the Crowley brothers, Dens & J Crowley, who have both frequently use their web pages to expound upon the most excellent deliciousness of this culinary wonder of the Lower East Side)

October 24, 2003

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But hey, at least the new place had lasers.

October 24, 2003

bar ↗+
laser ↗+

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Sunset on the strip. We ended up grabbing gyro sandwiches at some tiny, outdoor snack shop right down the street from our place. Our cute waitress, Ludmilla, was Kazakhstani and when she found out we were from New York City, started telling us about how she lived in the New York City area for 18 months as an au pair but after getting transferred to like 5 or 6 different households, her visa application was denied and she had to go back to Kazakhstan.

We asked her to elaborate and she launched into all these totally crazy stories about husbands falling in love with her, kids lying about her beating them, etc. Seriously, if you can think of any bad thing that a nanny can do, she was pretty much accused of doing it. At first we were sympathetic, but by after the 4th or 5th story (each that was delivered as she made visits to our table checking up on us) we decided that there was no way so much bad luck could befall one person in such a short period of time, quickly paid our check and got the hell away from (the girl we'd since nicknamed) "The Babyshaker" as quickly as we could.

October 24, 2003

sunset ↗+

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Buddha Cafe, the first place we popped into, was booming. But as we'd been told, we'd arrived in Crete about a week past the end of the "tourist season" and excluding a few people that we managed to pick out as fellow travelers, 98% of the people there were Cretan (the photo above represents the one, small clique of foreigners we saw out that night).

So concerning the locals, the first thing you should know is that Cretan women are among the prettiest I've ever seen in the world. Seriously, we were blown away. Here's the breakdown: 80% of them are drop dead gorgeous. 10% of them are just regular gorgeous. And the remaining 10% are maybe a little funny in the face, but they've still got ridiculous bums. Which brings me to point number two: 100% of Cretan girls have badonkadonk, J-Lo, pornstar asses. When viewed from the side, all of their bums look like the letter C. We nearly lost our tiny minds. We were like how could we not have heard about the asses here? Which brings me to the last point about Cretan girls: 100% of them wanted to have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FOUR OF US.

Chris talked to some of the local boys in Greek and then he explained to us that because Rethymnon is a tourism town, it's apparently taboo for the local girls to be interested in visiting boys because all the local boys will think she is a slut and won't want anything to do with her. *sniffle*

I Keep A Diary Productions proudly presents a new movie soon to be sweeping theaters everywhere: I DANCE ALONE! Starring:

October 24, 2003

bar ↗+
crowd ↗+

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Chris on the beach!

October 24, 2003

beach ↗+

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Fast forward nine hours! (That's right, all our traveling had finally caught up with us and we were zonked). It's now 6pm and we've all had a nice sleep, gotten showered and dressed. Here's the view of from our hotel lobby as we prepared to check out the beach (across the street and behind that row of buildings) and then find something tasty to eat.

October 24, 2003

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Here's our car for the week! A Peugeot 307 hatchback. Check out Fatty enjoying the warm Cretan breeze on his face (which was such a nice change after having been in London freezing our asses off not 10 hours ago).