Heraklion
As relaxed and calm as it is in Bali, the arrival and departure by public transport is more exciting. After Bali we wanted to go to Heraklion. So we made our way back the 2km to the country road, where the bus dropped us off on the way there and waited at about the same time for the bus that was to continue coming from Rethymno. Optimistically we raised our hands to signal the bus drivers to stop and only two buses rushed past us. But then the bus came to Heraklion, gave us a brief sign that the actual bus stop is a few meters further ahead, we ran there quickly and were able to buy our ticket in the bus.
After a good hour we reached Heraklion, drove once through the whole city past the harbor to the big bus station and then walked from there to our small accommodation, which was very centrally located in the city. We stayed here for three nights. Tomek especially liked the decor of the room (which I thought in advance when booking).
It was Sunday, all shops were closed and we hadn't brought too much food with us from Bali, so we just walked into the city, sat in a small cafe that looked delicious and where a lot of Greeks were sitting. Then we strolled a bit through the city, where we mainly found souvenir shops, clothes shops and restaurants. We then spent Monday looking for some new clothes for Tomek, but autumn fashion has also moved into the shops in Crete and shorts and T-shirts were really hard to find.
The next day we took the bus to the Palace of Knossos, which is only a few kilometers outside the city. We had read on the Internet that it was better to buy tickets online beforehand in order to get past the long queue at the entrance. But in 2020 everything is different and there was no queue to be seen at all. The palace is the largest Minoan palace in Crete and was built around 4000 years ago.
The remaining days in Heraklion were then very relaxed, we were walking by the sea and planning our onward journey in the accommodation.
Return to Athens
On the 5th day in the capital of Crete we took the ferry back to Athens in the evening. We had to check out of our accommodation at noon and sat down by the sea for an hour.
We were sitting there at exactly the right time in the right place, because suddenly an old lady stumbled right in front of us, fell and we were able to help her up immediately and even give her a plaster for her wound from our "first-aid kit". And the day went on adventurously ... we sat down for lunch in a restaurant and were eating fish when the floor began to shake and it felt like you were on a turntable. Tomek realized immediately that it had to be an earthquake. Fortunately, it was over after a few seconds. We finished our lunch and then slowly made our way to the ferry terminal. There we could also pick up our tickets that we had already bought online. But then we got a worried call from Tomek's family, “Are you all right? There was an earthquake in Greece and there is a risk of a tsunami! ”Only then did we learn that we had also felt the effects of the violent earthquake off the island of Samos near Izmir. We were very lucky that nothing happened to us and also that our trip to mainland Greece was not affected. So we said goodbye to Crete.
On the way back we had booked another ferry operator and had to find out that the armrests of the seats on this ferry could not be folded up and thus could not spread out on the seats. So Tomek decided to make himself comfortable on the floor.
But the 9 hours went by quite quickly (despite stronger swell than on the outward journey) and we reached Piraeus, the port city south of Athens, at dawn. We had booked an accommodation for two nights there, which we were able to check in at 8 o'clock in the morning. From our balcony there we had this view:
Our last days in Athens
Then we went to Athens for another two nights. Tomek had booked a large and very cheap accommodation for us, but did not pay much attention to the location in which it was located. The apartment was between Larissa Train Station and Omonia Square, which are both pretty shabby places in Athens. In particular, Omonia Square caught our attention negatively during our first stay in Athens. But this time we weren't there for sightseeing, because we were supposed to take a flight from Athens to Mexico a few days later!
We still had a few things to organize, such as sending parcels to Germany. At the beginning of our trip we bought a Greece travel guide as well as a hiking guide for Mount Olympus and over time a lot of information booklets, souvenirs etc. have accumulated. In addition, we have repeatedly received small gifts from hosts or in restaurants (such as the homemade cinnamon raki in Topolia). We didn't want to take all of this with us to Mexico, so we decided to send a few things home to our loved ones. So all we needed was a suitable post office. I quickly looked up google maps and memorized the route and we started walking. We should have looked beforehand where we wanted to go, because we turned into a side street and I said to Tomek "The post office is at the next intersection". But all we saw at the next intersection was a very, very shabby drug-dealing place! A man crouched on the ground, other figures were walking around and a guy who was completely off the track with a shopping cart was also very creepy. We both stopped instinctively and decided we didn't want to look any further for this post office. We turned on our heels and went back to the main street. That taught us that we definitely won't run into back streets in weird neighborhoods!
But then we went further into town and it became more and more touristy, organized and the people looked normal again. We ate another pita and then found a post office. However, this only accepted parcels and did not sell any mailing bags. But we found a stationery shop and at least knew where to go. So the next day we packed up our packages and ran back into town. We noticed that the pita shop where we got something to eat yesterday and all the other cafes on the street no longer had any chairs outside. It looked weird, but we didn't really care. Ultimately, we were able to send our parcels to Germany without any problems and thus lighten our luggage by a kilo or two!
The departure shortly before the lockdown
Our flight from Athens was scheduled for 6:30 a.m. We had originally planned to simply spend the night before at the airport in order to be there in time for baggage drop-off and check-in. But since I didn't feel so fit, we spontaneously decided to stay in an accommodation very close by. We found a small apartment in Artemida, which is about 15km from the airport and also offered an airport shuttle. We went there again by train and bus and arrived quite hungry in the village.
There were a few restaurants on the beach, but we noticed that all the chairs were stacked on top of each other and that no one was sitting in the restaurants. We realized that this must be a measure against the corona virus and it also explained why the chairs in Athens had all been cleared away. But there was an elderly lady sitting in a restaurant, so we went there and the waitress explained to us that we can only order food, but not eat on site. She was very cute and even brought us a couple of chairs outside for the wait. So we waited for our (really delicious) gyros in front of the door and then ate it on the beach. In the meantime, however, it had become cooler in Greece and the sun was not showing, so that swimming was out of the question.
In the meantime we found out that the airport in Thessaloniki was now completely closed. We were lucky that we wanted to fly out from Athens. But we were also affected by the measures when it came to our airport shuttle. Because due to a night curfew, our driver was only allowed to leave at 5 a.m. Since our flight was supposed to take off at 6:30 a.m., I was a little tense to see whether everything would go really well. You can read in our report about the flight and the entry to Mexico that it all worked out great!
At this point, it should be mentioned that two days after we left Greece, a nationwide lockdown was imposed for three weeks, which was significantly stricter than the rules in Germany. We can't even answer whether we should have been allowed to fly in that period. We were just very happy and grateful that we had such a good timing (again)!
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