5/2/98: Rented a car for the day and did a driving tour of Western Crete. Stopped to see Samaria Gorge, a mountaintop monastery, and a southern beach for a dip in the Libyan Sea.
NOTE: I don’t know why I was making a silly face in that photo above, but I like it anyway…
5/2/23: Samaria Gorge is one of the largest gorges in all of Europe. Sadly, we weren’t outfitted for serious hiking down a rugged 13km gorge, so we only wandered around a bit up top. It is a hike I’d like to return to make some day. The website West-Crete.com provides some great info about the gorge.
On our way back we stopped for dinner in some quaint mountain village, of which I can’t recall the name. The café was lovely, and the food delicious, but this turned out to be an occasion on which I made fool of myself. When it came time to pay the bill, I opened up my billfold to discover that I had brought along Turkish Lira, rather than Greek Drachmas! I was very embarrassed. I was becoming a little bit jaded about the honesty of touts and salesmen after being taken advantage by Turkish carpet shops and the like. But here I was without any local currency to pay a simple dinner tab, and I feared that the owner suspected me of trying to pull a fast one on him so I could dodge the bill. Ruth waited at the restaurant while I headed to the nearest “big” town to try and find an ATM. Sadly, I found none. When I came back with profuse and shame-faced apologizing, the owner laughed it off, and forgave the debt. But I left with a sick feeling in the pit in my stomach just imagining how he might think the worst of us and of future American tourists. This was definitely a life lesson in dealing in the currency of forgiveness. I promised myself two things: 1) I would be more careful about bringing along the correct currency; and 2) I would repudiate my jaded attitude and stop assuming the worst in people, even touts and carpet salesmen.
