October 12: SeaJets Santorini–Rethymno and on to Chania
We left Santorini on a Saturday afternoon and cruised into the port of Rethymno well after dark, though only an hour or so behind schedule. Our Welcome Pickups driver, Kyriakis (it means “Sunday”) was waiting for us to drive us an hour west to Chania.
One thing about the Greek economy–it’s brutal to young people. Kyriakis is an engineer with a job at a renewable energy company, but he finds it (considerably) more lucrative to drive tourists around Crete. Even with Crete’s arcane taxi rules (all his fares must either start or end in Chania), joining forces with his dad’s taxi company and spending a fair amount of downtime either driving to a pickup (he had to drive from Chania to Rethymno to collect us) or waiting for late pickups to materialize (our ferry was delayed) is much more likely to result in consistently reliable income than a professional job.
Kyriakis speaks English with a near-BBC accent, the result of a childhood spent listening to audiobooks of Tolkein and J.K. Rowling. He’s lived in Chania his whole life and speaks of it with deep affection. He gave us a list of things to be sure to experience in Chania and Crete:
We should eat at Syntrophia, home of the best souvlaki in Chania.
We should eat seafood at Manos, on the waterfront in the Nea Chora beachfront neighborhood of Chania.
We should get galataboureko at Perathorakis bakery, just around the corner from Manos.
We should try a sfakia ni pita, a great delicacy from the town of Chora Sfakion on the south coast.
We were to follow all of these recommendations, each of which proved sound.
The first one we followed was the suggestion to find Syntrophia that very night, right after we checked into the hotel around 9:00 p.m.. Syntrophia is a hole-in-the-wall souvlaki joint run by a man and what appears to be his mother. There’s nothing fancy there; the sign isn’t even in English. We sat at a table on the narrow sidewalk next to a bank of motor scooters that doordash drivers used for their deliveries. But the souvlaki definitely hit the spot. Even the hot dogs that are evidently part of a combo platter….
