Just czeching in...

We have landed in the most amazing little town here in the Czech Republic: Cesky Krumlov.  This town is a totally preserved castle/medieval town built within the windings of the Vltava river.  We have spent the past two days wandering the streets and eating and drinking the great bohemian food and beer.  Yeah,  can you say Pilsner Urquell!  We have run into a little cold snap here.  It has been a bit of a shock coming from the heat of Athens.   We head to Prague tomorrow to stay for a week.  Our niece, Lydia MacKinnon, will join us for a few days there.  We are all looking forward to spending some time with her.

As Audrey mentioned in the last blog post, we climbed Mt. Olympus.  It was a beautiful day.  We were a little lazy getting out the door that morning.  Mike and I both thought that there would be too much snow on the trail for the kids to summit in their "hiking" shoes (Keen sandals).  Lately the girls had been complaining that their feet hurt whenever we went on a longer walk.  So we ascended the mountain with the objective of just getting out, not really thinking that the summit was a reasonable objective.

Well, the kids were energized that day because we made it to the Refuge A, which is the halfway point, in just two hours.  Mike and I were both surprised and encouraged by this pace so we excitedly decided to continue up.  The Refuge has a restaurant ( you gotta love this place), so we fueled up and continued up the path.  We did reach the summit in only four hours of hiking!   We were all extremely excited to have climbed to the 2nd highest point in Greece.  Mt Olympus has 5 summits.  The highest summit requires a bit of scrambling with serious exposure, so we chose to summit the trekkers summit.   The trail is really steep and loose, so the down actually took longer than the up!  Boy, were we tired at the bottom.  But this being Europe, there was an fabulous restaurant right at the trail head and so we plopped down and enjoyed a celebratory meal of Goat Soup, and Burgers and of course some beer for Mike and some wine for me.  The hike was 11km up and 1800 meters of elevation gain.  So for those in the US.... We hiked up and back down about 6000 feet in about 14 miles in 10 hours.  The kids did great and we were all very proud of ourselves at the end.

The trail up Mt. Olympus is part of the E4 trail.  We  followed sections of this trail in Crete as well so I was curious about it.  I looked it up and discovered that the European Ramblers Association presides over no less than 12 of these E trails that transect the European continent.  E4 connects trails along the mediterranean from Cyprus, Crete, Greece all the way to southern Spain!  Maybe we will get to hike along E4 again....

Greece Mainland - Delphi, Meteora, Mt Olympus, and Athens

Lately we have been touring around mainland Greece. The first stop after our flight from Crete to Athens was Delphi. We did not arrive until late because of our flight being delayed! In Delphi we went to the Delphi archeological site! It was pretty cool! There were ruins of the Temple of Athena, an ancient gymnasium, and all sorts of other Greek ruins. After Delphi we made a stop at Meteora! It was the coolest thing to see monasteries on cliffs! You sometimes had to hike up stairs or take bridges to get to them! We finished Meteora and drove to Mt. Olympus! It is pretty snowy up at the top when you get the views! We are staying in a town called Litochoro. It is close to Mt. Olympus, but you still have to drive or hike quite a ways to reach it.  Greek food is delicious! I have not tried moussaka yet because it has eggplant in it. I have not tried pastistsio either. Pastistsio is basically moussaka but instead of cheese, veal, and eggplant it is noodle, veal, and eggplant.

Audrey:)

At the Ancient Stadium in Athens

Hiking to Lissos on Crete

Meteora

Monasteries at Meteora

Summit of Mt Olympus

Mt Olympus

Museum at Delphi

Parthenon in Athens

Beach time on Crete

Temple of Apollo-Delphi

Temple of Athena - Delphi

Ah, Crete, how I love you so....

We have to leave Crete tomorrow and I am so sad.  We have really enjoyed our "relaxtation" here in Paleochora.  You would think with two weeks we would have seen the whole island, as there is much to see.  But we just have not had the desire.  We have been very content hang out and to only explore within a one hour drive radius of our base.  We have been riding our bikes, reading, hiking and playing paddle ball on the beach.  I think we all needed this rest stop.  Traveling the world is hard work!

We chose well in picking Paleochora for our base as it is close to excellent hiking.  Mike wrote earlier about our hike in Samaria.  That was 17 km of downhill.  We all realized that we were sore the next day when we descended the stairs of the apartment!  Funny.  We also hiked the Agia Irini gorge which was equally gorgeous, but not as long.  The gorge itself is only 7km long and then most people walk on the road 5.5 km down to Sougia to catch the boat ferry.  When we were getting ready for this hike, Mike was encouraging me to plan to ride my bike to go retrieve the car, like he did with the Samaria gorge hike.  I love a good bike ride, but I was not into that sort of adventure - when Mike says something is challenging, it is really hard.  I chose to turn around at the 7km end of the gorge and hike back up the gorge and retrieve the car right away and drive down to meet everyone.  This way we didn't have to pay for the ferry and I got to hike uphill, AND I got to drive the manual transmission car on the curvy roads!  What a bonus.

Just two days ago we hiked to the ruins of Lissos (300 BC).  This hike starts 4km outside of Paleochora proper.  We rode our bikes out to the trail head and then hiked the 7km to Lissos and back.  The ruins were pretty sparse, but there was a nice mosaic in the temple of Asklepios.  It is amazing to me that these places are still around given the time exposed to the elements and earthquakes etc.
I am so pleased that we have been able to hike in most of the countries we have visited. The kids are agile, strong hikers now.  We do hear a fair amount of whining at times, but in general they are strong and up for a good challenge.  This is good because we hope to continue seeking out the hiking opportunities throughout the rest of our trip.  And of course, when we get back to Ouray....
I had to replace my running/hiking shoes this week.  Thankfully there is a sports store here.  It is no Ouray Mountain Sports, of course, but they do carry New Balance.

 As an aside, Mike and I both think Crete would be a great place to do a bike tour.  The roads have decent paving and very little traffic (at least on this side of the island).  There are little towns everywhere offering places to stay and good wine!  And the scenery is amazing, including the adorable goats everywhere!  Crete is on the list for future trips.

Bike ride through the hills of Crete

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, if you park a car at the start of the Samaria Gorge you have to figure out a way to retrieve it at some point. The hike is a one-way deal to the sea and you then take a boat back to Paleochora.

We chose to take our own car versus the shuttle because the shuttle was 18 Euros or around $24 pp.  That is nearly $125 for a family of 5.  We figured that if one person took the shuttle the following day, it would be a significant cost savings.

On the drive up to the gorge that day, we traveled through some spectacular countryside.  Very hilly, with neat little Cretan villages clinging to the hillsides, lots of olive groves, and goats around every turn. Hence the inexpensive olive oil and feta cheese...

As we made our way through one valley after another I remarked to Joanie just how fantastic the road bike riding would be through this section; albeit with some fierce climbing to overcome.  That was all it took; the seed was planted in my mind.  I had to ride this to retrieve the car the next day.

The guy at the bike rental shop thought I was daft when I proposed my idea to ride to Omalos for our car.  He was skeptical.  It turned out to be a great day and it definitely "scratched an itch". I came looking for something and I got it in spades.  It was 5850 vertical feet of climbing and around 1650 feet of descending over 52km.  Not a big distance, but very stout all the same.  It reminded me of one of the rides that Joanie and Sean Hart & I did last summer.  Good stuff.

It was more or less equivalent to climbing Red Mountain Pass twice, off the couch, with a beer belly from 6 months of travel, and on a 25lb. Mary Poppins bike.  It left a mark; I was worked at the end.

Hiking the Samaria Gorge

Here is a video of our day in the Samaria Gorge...

Paleochora, Crete

We have been enjoying a very, very good week on the island of Crete.  So much so that we decided to extend our stay by a week. Our original plan had us leaving Crete by ferry to the island of Milos.  I have no doubt Milos has a lot to offer, however, we were still feeling 'road weary' and thought it best to stay in one place for a while.  As it turns out, by the time we leave Paleochora, Crete next Thursday we will have spent 14 nights here; longer than any other location on our entire 9 month trip.  We have a nice apartment, it is affordable, lots of activities, inexpensive rental bikes, the beach is 100m away, etc. Yet another advantage of not having too much stuff pre-planned and pre-booked. We had not even purchased ferry tickets at this point, so it was simple to extend our stay and buy flights back to Athens. Kablam.

When we reviewed our last 6 weeks of travel, we realized just how 'on the go' we had been.  We covered a lot of ground in Jordan, Israel, and Turkey in around 35 days.  During that stretch we hit 16  separate locations!  That is a lot of transitions.  Add in the fact that it was the Middle East - which is a fairly intense part of the world in which to travel - and we were all feeling spent.  

So, getting back to Crete...when we landed here by plane from Athens, we could not miss the snow lingering on the north slopes of the high peaks.  I would not have guessed. Crete is VERY mountainous and commonly gets snow up high in the winter months.  We are staying in Paleochora which is located on the south coast at the far west end of the island.  Crete is a very well developed tourism destination, but most of that is on the north side and closer to the main airport (and port) of Heraklion. We chose Paleochora because the descriptions on the internet led us to believe it was a much more laid back place with no mass tourism development.  That turns out to be accurate and a very welcome thing. 

Our 2-bedroom apartment with full kitchen is only 320 Euros per week ($400) and it has ocean view.  At the end of the day the money matters and we have found our enjoyment level of a place is adversely affected when we feel the crush of it being too expensive.  Your $$ go at long ways in Crete (at the present).  

One of the primary reasons for coming to Crete is that it represented a bit of unfinished business for me dating back to my first trip abroad to Europe in 1989.  I had researched a great hike on Crete called the Samaria Gorge.  I really wanted to get here and do it, but like a lot of tick list items it went by the wayside because of one factor or another.  I never did make it to Crete on that trip, but I had not forgotten about the Samaria Gorge.  

The Samaria is very much the most well known hike in Crete and in fact many travelers come to Crete with hiking it as their primary trip purpose.  The logistics are somewhat involved:  you either drive or take a shuttle for 1 1/2 hrs to the trailhead; you hike the gorge to the sea for 16km; you get to the finish by 17:30 in order to catch a ferry along the coast back to Paleochora.  For those that take the shuttle, their day is finished.  For those that drive their own car and left it at the trailhead, it requires retrieving the car the next day.  That is another story for a different blog post...

The hike was spectacular and relatively uncrowded.  It had only just opened 5 days previously.  It is closed seasonally for high water in the creek.  It has a very alpine feel to the place.  You start at 1200m above sea level and finish at 0.  A big, long downhill hike through a gorgeous conifer forest and alpine terrain.  I never envisioned back in 1989 I would be doing the hike with my own three kids so many years later!  There was a pub at the finish.  Every good hiking destination should have a pub at the end.

Crete is somewhat of a hikers paradise.  Lots of fantastic terrain.  We did another gorge today that was 7km in length. 

We have had rental bikes the whole time and have been enjoying exploring on those.  This is the kind of place that is not too much bigger than Ouray.  We send the kids down to the local bakery and grocery store on their own.  They also go biking together on their own.  So long as they stick together, we are cool with it and they have enjoyed the freedom.  We are looking forward to our second week.  

Hiking the Samaria Gorge

Alpine terrain in upper Samaria

The Narrows of Samaria Gorge

Big Boy beer at end of hike

Exotic looking Cretan flower

Elofonisi Beach

Audrey at Elofonisi Beach (West Crete)

Turkey video

Here is an edited video of some of our highlights from 3 weeks in Turkey.  We are currently enjoying some serious beach time and relaxation in Paleochora, Crete.

Tomorrow we intend to hike the Samaria Gorge.