Island life

We've now been in Crete for almost a week, and we're starting to acclimatise to island life.

Our routine goes something like this:

• Go to the bakery to buy fresh bread for breakfast
• Have breakfast (bread, tomato, olive oil)
• Do one or all of the following till lunch: play with Milly, go to the supermarket, or go for a walk.
• Have lunch (either eat in or eat out - depending on budget)
• Put Milly down for her afternoon nap
• When Milly wakes, go to the beach for a swim
• Have dinner (eat in or eat out)
• Put Milly to bed
• Watch TV or read a book
• Sleep

Not the most arduous life, I'm sure you'll agree - it's funny in that we're actually doing so little, but time is flying past - almost too fast, slow down a little time - we're not in a hurry to get anywhere.

Our apartment is lovely, as mentioned previously - it's actually two single room apartments with a shared entrance way - together they are bigger than our old flat in london, although we're mostly living in the front apartment, and only sleeping in the back one.

The apartment has a lovely big breezy "indoor terrace" - which, as you can see in the picture above, has amazing views of the harbour - and the boats coming in and out into Souda port - which is good for Milly, as she has a fascination with boats and loves to point them out and count them - lucky old her.

We've spent a lot of time in the indoor terrace, it offers shelter from the sometimes overbearing sun (I'm not, nor have I ever really been a big sun fan - although I am working on some sort of tan, only so that the Europeans don't point and laugh when I take my shirt off at the beach, like they have on previous holidays) and is close enough to the nightlife that Claire and I can feel like we're amongst it, with a glass of vino in hand and music on the stereo, once Milly has gone down for her night sleep.

Almyrida is also lovely, it's quite small and seems to be almost exclusively setup to cater to the tourist crowd. There is a single road that runs parallel with the beach, with accommodation on the mountain side of the road, and tavernas and bars in the strip between asphalt and sand on the other.

The power has gone out twice in the evenings in the past week, once when we were at home (thank goodness for the macbook battery life) and again last night when we were out for dinner. It must be a fairly regular occurrence, as it was greeted with a cheer from our fellow dinners and the restaurant switched over to generator power within a matter of minutes.

We've been going for daily swims, well trying to at least - it seems that Milly has no real desire to go in the water - and is quite insistant that she shan't go in - she had been quite stubborn about the whole thing - I wonder where she gets that from?

Wednesday was somewhat of a landmark day though, Claire and I managed to coax her into the water and then we spent 15 minutes splashing in the surf - something that we repeated yesterday, and will be looking to do again this afternoon.

Speaking of Milly, her talking is really coming along now - she's pretty good at letting you know what she wants these days, and can respond with an "OK daddy" or "no daddy" when asked if she wants something, and every now and then will chime in with a "thank you daddy" when given something, all very cute.

Today we're going to head back to Chania - a town 30 minutes up the road, and the capital of this particular area - we went the other day and noted it had a beautiful Venetian port, an area we're going back to explore.

We're also going to try and seek out the Battle of Crete cemetery, which is somewhere in Souda and where Greek, British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers who died 70 years ago attempting to stop the Nazi's invading are buried.

Trip in numbers so far:

average temp in over the past 5 days: 32°C

number of clouds seen since arriving in crete: 0

approximate beard length: 3mm

approximate time that Milly wakes every morning: 7:20 (despite all our efforts to make her sleep later, including letting her stay up at night, reducing her daytime naps - little minx!)