“We’re now on Crete, which is good, but that means there’s no more English,” Dad commented as we walked into the bakery. We were in Iraklion, the port city where we had landed and gotten our rental car after showers on the ferry, and we were hungry. The bakery was the perfect place to sate that hunger.

The subtitles of the pastries were in English (Dad was wrong), and I chose a slice of spinach pie and a mini sugar-covered donut. Mom and Ethan also chose mini sugar-covered donuts, but Ethan had a cheesy pastry and Mom had two mini spinach pies and one mini cheese pie. Dad ordered a tomato-and-olive ring and a chocolate-frosted mini donut. We ate in the car our drive to our house.

We were greeted by the owner’s sister-in-law when we arrived. According to the car, it was 23°C (73.4°F). It was much, much cooler than it had been in Athens, and the crystal-clear pool in the backyard didn’t seem so inviting.

Dad napped, and then we were back on the road to get groceries. After driving through Rethymno, Crete’s third-largest city, we settled on the Lidl supermarket in our village called Agia Triada. We bought—along with foodstuff including garlic, frozen ravioli, orange-chocolate cookies, and bell peppers—soap, laundry soap, and the cheapest serviettes we could find: we bought three packages. The available bright colors were tangerine, yellow, pink, green, and dark purple. Guess what? We didn’t get pink! Ethan originally chose tangerine, yellow, and pink, but then he discovered the green and purple. After I vetoed the purple, he selected the green. It went well with neither pink and yellow nor pink and tangerine, so I reluctantly dropped the pink. We used white ones from the bakery for dinner, though, so my pain was not even recognized.

Upon our return, I happily organized the groceries in our kitchen before heading upstairs to my room. Realizing I’d left my Kindle downstairs in the living room, I dashed down to get it. Ethan was lounging on the couch reading, and I asked him why he hadn’t been swimming—he who had seemed so ready to jump into a pool in Athens at the drop of a hat.

“I don’t know” being the standard response to everything, that was as much as I got. But within five minutes, he was out in the pool. I joined him and Dad outside shortly thereafter, while Mom slaved over a hot stove in the kitchen. After lounging in the sun and reading for a few minutes, I eventually gathered my courage and slipped into the cool pool. Ethan was convinced and returned to enjoy the shallow waters. The shadows were getting longer, and before the whole pool was in the shade Ethan had retreated to the concrete and his towel. I stayed in the pool doing backflips until ten minutes before supper, which was salad, green beans, and pasta with tomato sauce and chicken.

Ciao!