Driving in the mountains.

Monday, August 12th
Breakfast is in a beautiful, mostly shaded courtyard, in the center and bottom of the Venetian palace that is Casa Delfino. I slide on my bottom down many, many marble stairs and thus manage to join the other breakfasters, hopping with my pinks crutches, muttering "Small steps, small steps," like our driver Yanni told me. It's getting slowly better. Maybe being in this hotel - a veritable festival of stairs and high steps - will speed up my learning process.

After the breakfast I brave the bathtub with succes. Thus we are ready when the Hertz person comes to deliver the car. With one small detail: the car is parked rather far away, down the end of the street and then out the road along the coast some, but eventually we're on our way, taking a route suggested by Stella at Casa Delfino, which will take us up near the Lefka Ori mountains and the Theriso Gorge. After about half an hour negotiating twists and turns, as instructed by the laconic voice of the GPS lady,  to get out of the city, we're suddenly approaching the most fantastic gorge with huge mountain sides rising all around us.

Some goats are sauntering calmly along the road

and I even see one on what seems like a vertical rockside above the road. The road goes up and up in very tight turns, each revealing mountains more majestic and higher than the next - so unexpected. We want to find a place for lunch and unexpectedly luck us with the Rizinia Tavern,

which sits alone at the highest point of the road. We're completely alone, sitting at a table overlooking a view which reaches to the sea in the distance,

and the only sounds are bees and cicadas. A pleasant breeze is blowing. We have a cold beer and then eat "the grandmother's" specialty Marathopites, a spinach and fennel filling between two very thin stiff pancakes. Incredibly good. We eat this with an ample tomato, cucumber, and pepper salad with a local soft, mild cheese. And a Fix beer - each.

For dessert a pancake filled with soft crubly cheese and drizzled with honey. And then of course a gritty Greek coffee. Couldn't be more perfect.

The drive down is also lovely, taking us through little towns, and the GPS lady leads us trough the twists and turns to the seaside fort, where we find a parking place for the car, wery close to our road. An Italian speaking mime, with a white face (the oily paint peeling off in the sun) and a Charlie Chaplin outfit, complete with a painted on Hitler moustache, fusses around us to help, and maybe also get some money. Turns out he's not Italian, but rather Rumanian, and also that he had expected more money from us.
The return to the hotel after a day of vistas and light is a bit of a let down: the several stairs, the difficulty of it all, the dark room with no daylight or cell-phone reception, as well as bad internet, and where I cannot move around easily. I'm sure Casa Delfino is lovely for people that can walk (and I wish I could!), but for me it's a prison.  While Oswaldo goes out to shop for a little supper, for it's too much of an effort to go out for dinner, I decide to cut our pre-paid losses and phone our next hotel in Heraklion, the Galaxy, which I know is wheelchair friendly from earlier e-mails. Yes! They have a room available. We snack, have some wine and pack. We're moving on!
More photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157635065331679/