Adventures with Jeff

Soon after Dian (cousin) headed home Jeff (nephew) joined us. It is so much fun to share this place with family and friends. Each visitor brings us more insight into our surroundings and we get to do things we haven’t done before. We also do things we have done before. And come to think of it I’m not sure which I like better; doing something with a friend that you have done many times or doing something new with a friend. I think it must mostly have something to do with doing things with friends! Jeff went on four long hikes while he was here. I went on none of them! Grier went on two of them. Grier had the chance to go on all four of them, but you’ll have to ask him shy he didn’t, I’m not telling! But it was so much fun hearing about the hikes and looking at the pictures. Hmm…maybe it’s even fun when your friends do things new things that you don’t get to do. For me I think that confirms it. It’s the part about having friends and family that is the best part! But we did get to do a lot of things together too. And thanks to Jeff for helping to get our new tiny church home to our front porch (where Grier says it will stay until the movers come when we head home to Poulsbo). They really do have tiny churches here, some even tinier than this one. A future Blog story that I plan to write will be called the Churches, Chapels, and Chaplets.

We ate some spectacular food, went camping, and did lots of swimming. I noticed that we were able to finish all the food we ordered at restaurants while Jeff was here. No left overs! And I think Jeff also rested up after his summer job as a ranch hand. It was hard to see him leave.

Now that I have the pictures attached I can see that you need more explanation.

The first pictures are from Herculaneum. We picked Jeff up at the airport there and then spent a couple days touring. The pottery is Minoan and is in the Archeological museum. We also walked on top of the city wall and took some pictures down on the out door movie theater and some playing fields. Unfortunately for Herculaneum most of the old city structures are gone and what you see today inside the old city walls looks much like the fairly dreadful view out our hotel window. But there are some nice pedestrian walkways, pretty churches, and the waterfront in the evening with the castle was very nice. The pictures at the ruins are the Knossos Minoan Palace.

The next set of pictures are taken after Grier and I dropped Jeff off at the head of the Samaria Gorge hiking trail. We drove to Paleochora where we set up camp and then met Jeff at the ferry that brings hikers from the end of the gorge hike. There are some pictures of a small church we stopped on the way to meet Jeff. We camped at Paleochora for two nights.

The last group of pictures we taken on a day trip into Chania. We went for a carriage ride. It was really nice to be able to look around while we were riding. In the past we have walked the route that the carriage took. It is hard to look around and walk over the rough cobbles and other interesting obstructions and look around! Chania was showing off for Jeff that day. It is such a beautiful city. The last picture is Jeff next to our tiny church. It is called Agia Triada, the Holy Trinity and is a model of a church on the way to Aptera which is a small village near Chania. Although at one time Aptera was one of the major cites in the area. But this was in Greek, Roman and Byzantine times. Now you can visit the archeological site at Aptera.

I will post this blog before I get Jeff’s pictures and will add more pictures from him. He took a lot of beautiful hiking scenery pictures.