Woohoo Santa Run :)

Wow 2 days in a row of waking up with sunshine :)  Vivien had said it was going to be nice for the next few days.

Had some pomegranate for breakfast 

Bought these 5 pomes for only 2E! 

We drive the car in about halfway to Chania.  Park it in the side street and then back to the main street to catch the bus in.  When we get to the Agora we go over to the Santa Run booth. I had checked online a couple of days ago to see what this was all about.  The girl in the both registered us for the "run" (pretty sure its just a walk) which starts at 3pm Dec 26th.  The cost is 15E each which goes to charity for kids in hospitals.  We then get a bag which has a WHOLE Santa Suit in it!! Plus a number to wear and a wrist band to get into the street party before the run.  Sounds like lots of fun plus a good cause :)

Dwayne paying registration fee

And we have our Santa Suits!

We bought a small bag of popcorn and got on the little train for a short trip around Chania. It was more for the kids because it didn't go far LOL!!

Yippee on the train:)

Lots of popcorn, candy floss and roasted chestnuts for sale in the main square

And balloons!

After that we head to the market to get some veggies,  need some cucs and carrots. Then saw the 2E baskets of grape tomatoes, so got those.  Also could use some olives - of course! Everything is priced so cheap at the market.  The most expensive thing we bought was 750gm of sheep feta at 7E. He made sure I understood it was from a sheep - he showed horns, and I made moo sounds to say not cow LOL!! But come to think about it maybe he meant goat!! Sheep don't have horns! Oh well it does taste good :)

We then came to the restaurant that we've had kebab at before, so ordered 2.  Again they were really good :)  A few more stops and then we walked to the bay and sat down on a bench, watched the sea for a while before heading back into the city to check where there had been some buildings demolished last week.

George the Grill Master watching our lunch being cooked

Not sure what kind of mushrooms these are but seem to be popular. Wonder if they would make a nice mushroom soup??

A little snack on the bench while watching the sea 

No big waves today!

Just last week there were some dilapidated buildings attached to the old wall of the original city

We read that when the wall was built they used whatever they could find and here you can see they used pieces of old columns

This is the next building to be taken down

Here they used lots of columns

Triartiri Cathedral in Chania centre - not sure why only 1 bell tower

Intricately carved doors on the church

Merchants downtown are busy decorating

Its busy in the street cafes today - no matter the weather they all enjoy sitting outside. Some cafes provide propane heaters

Here are the kourabiede cookies in the bakery 

When we were coming into Chania in the morning I noticed that at a park we past there were some animals in pens, so we walked over there to see what was there.  We saw a Cretan Wild Goat with its long horns and a few birds.  The Cretan Wild Goat is only found on the island of Agios Theodoros just off the coast of Chania.  Normally there is a boat cruise over to the island but not at this time of year.

Thought this tree looked pretty amazing!

And the branches are HUGE!

The Cretan Wild Goat

Pretty birdies :)

My whistling got the peacock to get up and walk around but not spread its beautiful tail feathers 

It was now time to head home so walked over to a bus stop.  We sat for awhile and then decided we should just keep walking to the next bus stop. As we are walking we are looking at the restored homes along this street.  They must look beautiful inside. Then before you know it we are at the bakery cafe where Dwayne had a HUGE chocolate eclair! So we stopped in and I had a piece of cake while Dwayne choose a difficult to eat baklava wrapped in phyllo! The owner said he only had a plastic fork that I could use for my cake but no metal fork for Dwayne!  So the sticky roll was wrapped in some waxed paper and passed to Dwayne.  Mine was good along with my latte, Dwayne's was sticky and sweet. But he enjoyed it :)

Still has some cool decorations along the eaves - but cracking pretty bad

Yup going to need a lot of work to get this place liveable

One that has been beautifully restored!

Dwayne's sticky dessert

YUMMMMM!  Cake with custard filling

Afterwards we decided we were only about 1.5km away from where we parked the car, so decided to save our last bus ticket and walk off dessert :) and keep the last ticket for "incase" LOL!!  Don't think we will be taking the bus anymore for the duration of our time left in Chania. Because there won't be any reason to go to the market next Saturday since we will not need anything that we can't get a few of at the local store.

I emailed Vivien and asked if she and Chris wanted to join us for lunch tomorrow at a beach they had recommended. As it turns out they are going for lunch with the couple that are renting their condo.  She added that the restaurant they were thinking of is closed until Jan 7th.  But there is another one if we wanted to check it out and gave us the name and a phone number to call first.  We'll probably just go and see what's open.  Hope tomorrow is a sunny as it was today :)