June 28 – Day 1
There were a number of options for our annual summer break this year. So many, in fact, that it took us a while to finally settle on going back to Crete for a second year in a row. Remember, we also went last year, with my folks, right after Monki’s birthday. This year, we’d booked another all-inclusive for the week before her birthday, at a different resort in a different part of the island (Crete is the 88th largest island in the world). We also decided to rent a car this time, to get out and explore a bit more.
And so, come Saturday, June 28, we found ourselves all packed and ready to drive out to Vilnius to catch our flight. The only hitch was we didn’t want to leave dirty dishes, so instead of letting me wash them, Rasa decided to run the dishwasher on a short cycle while we were doing our final preparations. I mean, seriously, what’s the point of a dishwasher unless you use it, right? Except the short cycle wasn’t all that short and Monki and I ended up waiting a little bit outside by the car, all loaded up, while Rasa waited for the machine to finish up. Once it was done, and we’d made the prerequisite stop at Maxima to make sure we had suntan lotion and various medications we might need, we were on our way.
We got to the Vilnius airport with no problem and Rasa had prebooked us into the long-term parking structure. Naturally, as we had arrived in late morning, there were absolutely no spots on any of the lower floors so up and up we went, finally backing into a spot on the roof, under the open sky. No big deal, really, except the turns in that structure are rather tight and we got to experience all of them. We’d get to do it again when we left, too. Rasa swore as we passed row after row of already parked cars that next time, we’d spend the extra money for a guaranteed VIP spot on one of the first 3 levels. I whole-heartedly agreed.
With two pieces of underweight luggage in tow (we were allowed 3 at 20kg apiece) we made our way to the new section of the airport, with redone check-in counters and security systems. Allegedly, we no longer had to remove electronics from carry-on bags. I was looking forward to this. Turns out, while you didn’t have to take things out of your bag, you still had to empty your pockets and put your phone into the scanner.
This is where we hit our first snag. Seems when we parked, I had moved Rasa’s phone, which she’d been using for navigation, out of the way in order to grab the long cable for Monki’s iPad so she could listen to her music in the rental car. By doing this, I had taken the phone out of line of sight and so it remained in the car as we were approaching the security checkpoint. I sent the girls through while I navigated back out through the maze to the parking structure to retrieve it.
By the time I got back, the lines were longer and, of course, my backpack got flagged for a random check so while normally, I guess, you don’t have to remove your electronics… I did. Ah well. No big deal. Except it put us a little delayed which meant we didn’t have time to grab a proper lunch before boarding. We did have time, though, to exchange surprise bags*.
The flight itself was uneventful. There was a slight bit of turbulence and Monki, who is prone to motion sickness, felt a little ill, but didn’t actually get sick on the plane. Landing in Greece, there was a bit of a wait for our bags, but we got them (Monki actually pulled them off the conveyer) and we got on our bus to take us to our resort.
This is where Monki got sick. The 45-minute ride west of the airport was a little much for her already delicate stomach but we’ve been doing this long enough, we had a collection of bags and in the end, she did what she did and felt all the better for it. The bus dropped us off at a place called Bali Mare, explaining that our resort, Filion Suites, was inaccessible to the large bus but they would send a car down for us. We had no choice but to trust them and sure enough, just as the bus pulled away, a white van with the resort name painted on the side pulled up.
The van was our first indication something might be amiss. We had booked a 5-star resort, with incredible pictures and generally positive reviews, but this van felt like the service vehicle of an off-strip motel in Vegas. The inside was gross. The window didn’t open, the floor was sticky, and the seats hadn’t been cleaned since it had been in the showroom. But hey, who knows, right? We climbed in and hoped for the best. The resort itself was 2km up into the mountains, along narrow and windy roads. But looked good from a distance.
The lobby was on the top floor, seeing as how the place was built going down the side of the hill, and it seemed nice. Joseph, the night manager, checked us in and gave us a room all the way at the bottom of the resort. The van took us down the hill and as soon as we unlocked the door, we knew something was wrong. The room was horrible. It wasn’t made up for the three of us, the back door (which led out to a ground floor patio and was in the room where Monki would be sleeping) didn’t lock. I tried to call the front desk to say something, but the phone didn’t work. Not a good situation.
So we hiked all the way up to the lobby and told Joseph what the problems were.
“Oh yes, the phones don’t work, I know. And I can send someone down to fix the door, no big deal.” He then went on to explain that we had arrived earlier than he expected and the room we were supposed to have wasn’t ready and we should go get some dinner and stay in our original room and the next morning, the hotel manager would fix things.
“What time were you expecting us,” I asked. “What time was the room we were supposed to be in going to be ready?”
“Not until 10pm at least.”
“That’s okay, we can wait.”
“No really, it’ll be better if you stay where you are for tonight. I’ll fix everything.”
I said okay, and we went off to dinner. After dinner and the evening’s entertainment (which was strictly for young kids) we went back to the room only to discover an infestation of ants and other bugs in the room.
Back up I went to talk to Joseph, to demand our original room, only to be told he gave it away to someone else who came in after us (obviously, since we were waiting until morning). I hit the roof. By the time all was said and done we had a different room. It wasn’t great, but at least there were no bugs, and the balcony was above ground floor.
As we went to sleep that night, Rasa and I looked at each other. “Five stars my ass.”
* Surprise Bags are a long-standing tradition in my family, where, when going on a trip, you get a small bag with stuff to do while traveling, maybe some candy, a toy, book, or whatever. I like keeping the tradition alive.
June 29 – Day Two
After a slightly restless night, we were up in time to head upstairs for breakfast. Our new room was on the same (basically) level as one of the three pools and two floors below the restaurant. I did discover, when I was getting our room changed, that there was an elevator in the main building, so we took that to the dining hall (the only one, by the way, despite the advertisements of a second restaurant at the bar – this becomes important later) and tried the food.
I neglected to mention in the write-up about dinner last night that they had run out of plates in the buffet, since the staff had decided washing them was a bit much late in the evening, so in the morning, at least, it was nice to see a stack of plates. The food, though, was really no better than it had been. At this point, none of the food in the heater bins had labels so you had no idea what you might be scooping onto your plate (later in the week, a few labels would randomly show up but without any consistency). To be fair, some of it you could guess at, but really, it was often in the form of “that looks like a dried version of a cucumber.”
They did have an omelette bar, which consisted of four possible ingredients: Ham, Cheese, a Bell Pepper Mix, and something I couldn’t identify. Since the omelette chef didn’t speak English, we were left to pointing what we wanted. This was fine, until I wanted to order a plain omelette for Monki and the chef had to get a translator to understand I didn’t want anything in it. There was also a dress squeezed orange juice machine, the kind where you put in the whole orange and the machine extracts the juice. A basket of oranges was nearby. Except, a good number of them were moldy. It became a kind of pirate treasure hunt to get the oranges worthy of squeezing for juice.
Over the next few days, I ended up with ham and cheese omelettes while Monki had pancakes with Nutella and Rasa had as much watermelon as she could find (usually only a couple of slices, but anything was better than nothing).
We ate and left pretty quickly, since there was no reason to hang about. It wasn’t a comfortable place at all. While the servers were generally nice, it still felt like we were being rushed.
Since our rental car wasn’t scheduled until the next day, we figured we’d take the semi-regular shuttle down to the beach in Bali. It was the same disgusting white van which had gotten us and brought us up the night before and dropped us in front of a restaurant on the Main Street in the village. I noticed something interesting here. The restaurant we were in, was affiliated with the hotel since they had a menu for it in the lobby. I’m guessing this was the “fine dining” all the pictures showed.
Behind the restaurant was a stairway leading down to the water. Again, we were given no information about what was going on. When we descended the six or so floors we were greeted with a couple of rows of deck chairs. We spotted a pair on either side of an umbrella with a white towel thrown across one of them, but no personal stuff. So we grabbed them and I went up to the bar to pay. It was there I was informed that since we were staying at the Filion, deck chairs were free. Yay! So as we start to set up, a guy comes down and tells us that the chairs we were in were “reserved.” I questioned it, especially since there was a big sign proclaiming “no reserving” of chairs, but we moved anyway. Worked out okay since we found a couple of chairs closer to the water.
Now, a few days before we left, we had gone to a local sporting goods shop to get Monki a mask and snorkel, something she’d been asking for. Now was her chance to try it out, at least the mask part. She’d get to the snorkel later, but for now, she was doing great, dealing with the waves and swimming without her floaties in the ocean, looking down and seeing whatever there was to see.
Rasa decided to keep our chairs safe while Monki and I spent several hours in the surf. We explored a nearby cave and body surfed and laughed as the water splashed over our chairs and got Rasa wet a few times. After a few hours, we decided lunch back at the hotel (all inclusive, remember?) would be the cheaper option so we climbed up the stairs and waited for the shuttle. While we waited, Monki and I started our souvenir shopping (it’s never too early!)
After food it was back in the pool for several more hours. Now was the time Monki really learned how to use her snorkel. It was nice, too, since the uniform depth of the pool was 1.5m, I could walk along with her anywhere she wanted to swim. I was close enough to catch her but far enough to let her do her thing.
Before dinner, with both ocean and pool water soaking into our skin, we all opted for a quick rinse before heading up for dinner. Rasa pointed out to me that the info sheet we were given upon check in stated that men had to dress for dinner – no shorts. In fact, men were supposed to dress in slacks and nice shirts. The only problem was that the single pair of long pants I brought with me were the jeans I wore in Lithuania and on the plane and was planning on wearing for the return trip to same. Plus, I only had t-shirts and it was bloody hot outside. Additionally, nowhere were we informed of this before we arrived and, based on the level of cleanliness, food quality, and service, I’m not sure they were in any position to dictate dress code. Not to mention the number of cats running around the dining room begging for table scraps. Also, if there were more than one restaurant, maybe it would make a little more sense. But the bar had two plate warmers and a selection of pre-packaged salads, which pretty much never got refilled more than once during the day so that didn’t count.
So I wore my shorts. And sure enough, as I walked in, they tried to stop me by letting me know of the dress code. I informed them I didn’t have any long pants and just kept walking. There were a lot of guys there wearing shorts. The other interesting thing here is that the dress code applied only to guys. Woman could wear French cut bikinis and nothing else, and no one said a word. Just another tick against this place.
After dinner, we were initially informed the evening entertainment would be a magician, but it turned out not to be the case (he would actually show up the next night and, before you ask, no, there was no posted list) and instead we were treated to some ambient jazz. We left early since we had to get up early the next morning to get the car.
Getting the Hang of Thursdays 