After our stop in Heraklion we met up with Bart and Ann again and travelled east to a fairly low-key resort town called Elounda. The town was okay, but the surrounding area was really beautiful. The Spinalonga peninsula juts out from the mainland near here, forming a gorgeous bay. Beyond the peninsula, Crete’s eastern mountains loom, so that views in every direction feature bands of various shades of blue. The bay is dotted with beaches in various directions, so you are never too far from a good swim.

Two things did go wrong with our visit here. First was the weather. This is my fifth visit to Greece, and I’ve rarely ever encountered anything other than hot, dry weather. It almost never occurred to me that anything else existed here. And September is supposed to be an ideal time to visit. But we just had a few days of moody, rainy, grey weather, with an occasional respite of sunshine.

The second problem is that we rented an apartment on AirBNB that turned out to be a loser — one of those that looks much better in the pictures than in real life. Jim and I generally avoid AirBNB because of the wild unpredictability of what you get. But Bart and Ann are bigger fans, and it can be fun sharing a house with friends. But this place just felt crappy. Two of the three bedrooms were on an entirely subterranean floor, with the only light coming from the below-ground portion of a light well. These rooms were dark and depressing. Furnishings and towels and bed linens felt like cheap hand-me-downs from someplace else.

But none of this could stop the four of us from having a great time. We beat the weather by playing lots of cards. We survived the poor-value apartment by making lots of jokes. And when the weather took a surprise turn for the better we reveled in the sunshine on a wonderful beach. And of course we talked politics incessantly, as we are wont to do with these two.

And last, but not least, we also visited a leper colony. Spinalonga island is not just any leper colony. It’s an island dramatically situated in the bay with ruins of a 16th century Venetian fortress, later Turkish reinforcements, and the town that served as many as 1,000 resident lepers in the early to mid-20th century. Best leper colony we’ve ever been to.

We were on our own for three days in Heraklion after Bart, Ann, Athena, and Ken went up into the mountains of Crete on their own. Known variously today as Heraklion, Heraclion, and Iraklion (all of which mean “the city of Heracles) it is the capital and largest city of Crete. As if the various names aren’t confusing enough, from the time of the Arab conquest of Crete in the early 9th century it was known as Chandax or Candie or Candia or Candy. All of which made learning the history of the city confusing. For me at least.

But history is what you come here for quite nearby is the Palace of Knossos where the legendary King Minos’s Minotaur ate young Greeks. Knossos, originally settled as early as 7,000 BC may well have been Europe’s first city; the historian Will Durant called the Minoans “the first link in the European chain.” Now we didn’t actually go out to Knossos as we’d been there just a couple of years ago and my sense was that it hasn’t changed much in that period. We did, though, go to the Heraklion Archeological Museum and enjoyed these crazy old pieces.

And just by way of background I love the myth of the Minotaur. At some point, you see, King Minos of Knossos had pissed off the Greek god Poseidon by keeping a beautiful bull that he was supposed to have sacrificed. Poseidon got him back by making the wife of Minos fall in love with the bull, the offspring of which coupling was half bull and half man. This Minotaur fed on humans and, after defeating the Athenians in battle Minos required the Athenians to send him seven youths every several years to keep the Minotaur satisfied. The story goes on – Ariadne falls in love with the Athenian Theseus and helps him kill the Minotaur, Theseus then dumps Ariadne and becomes King of Athens. They just don’t make stories like that any more.

At any rate, we really liked Heraklion. The Archeological Museum was very good and another museum of the history of Crete was pretty good. The city has some pretty serious artistic chops: the great author Nikos Kazantzakis (Zorba the Greek, Last Temptation of Christ) hailed from Heraklion as did the 16th century artist known as El Greco. There was some great food – we had lunch at Peskesi twice, a place that serves authentic Cretan food, and thought it was one of the great restaurants we’ve ever eaten at; so good that we couldn’t get reservations for dinner – and much of the city center is a car-free pedestrian zone with lots of happening bars and restaurants. One day at an OK beach nearby and a couple Martinis one night that were worthy of anything Boston or New York could offer so that’s pretty much all you need in life.

And then after a quick three nights we were moving on again, this time a little further east to Elounda, still on the north coast of Crete, to meet up with Bart and Ann again for a few days.

When we were visiting Boston last spring we pleaded with our old neighbors Bart and Ann to meet us in Greece this fall. They were interested but non-committal at the time. Some time later their friends from California, Ken and Athena, also prodded them to come to Greece. So they gave in and set plans in motion. The result is that we all just flew into Chania, Crete and took up residence in a lovely apartment overlooking the harbor for a few days.

It was not just any old apartment, but part of a lovingly restored “palazzo” built on top of Chania’s Byzantine walls during the Venetian rule of Crete somewhere in the 13th to 17th centuries. The building served as the residence of the Venetian rulers until Chania fell to the Turks in 1645, when it became the residence of the Turkish Pasha. The house survived heavy bombing in World War II and was eventually restored by an American painter named Dorothy Andrews. Today it is an elegant monument to all of those eras. Our apartment’s stately rooms and huge rooftop terrace offered sweeping views of the Chania harbor.

It was a wonderful place to reconnect with Ann and Bart — and to get to know their friends Ken and Athena. We also got lots of special insight into Greek food, language, and culture from Athena, who is a native of Greece and a very fun-loving person. (You might guess that Athena Georgakopoulos is Greek, no?) So we had a wonderful few days of socializing, playing cards, sitting on the beach, sipping wine, and exploring Cretan cuisine.

From here Jim and I will stop in the Cretan capital of Heraklion for a few days before rejoining Bart and Ann in the eastern part of the island.