Crete, day eight: Love, lamb, and the hangover from hell
I woke up today with a hangover so biblical, I half-expected to find stone tablets on the bedside table and a burning bush in the bathroom. The aftermath of yesterday’s ouzo debauchery had settled deep into my bones — the kind of hangover that makes you question all your life choices, your belief in hydration, and the location of your soul.
Everything hurt. My head. My liver. My dignity. Even my dreams had a hangover. The kind of internal carnage that makes your teeth ache, your blood feel carbonated, and your brain rattle like a bag of broken marbles. My liver filed for divorce sometime around 3 a.m., citing irreconcilable differences and too much ouzo in a coffee cup.
Enter: salvation.
Not in the form of water, nor coffee, nor the sweet release of death — but in the form of a wonderful, unbothered, clearly-indestructible older (and wiser) couple we’d met at the hotel. Sun-kissed, smiling, and entirely too functional for 9 a.m., they saw my sorry state and offered their time-honoured hangover cure.
Her remedy?
Ouzo and Coke.
His?
Ouzo and Sprite.
And me? In my desperate, cracked state of vulnerability?
I had both.
Because when in Crete, do as the locals do. Or at least, do as the retired legends who apparently treat aniseed-flavoured rocket fuel as a breakfast drink do.
Did it work? Not exactly.
But did I care anymore? Also no.
I was now part of the problem. And I felt strangely… at peace.
So what do you do when you’re too poisoned to hike, too bloated to dive, and the wind is whipping sand into your eyeballs like nature’s own facial exfoliant?
You lie by the pool like a hungover sea lion and contemplate death.
Or, in our case, you notice your partner’s feet.
And you realise they’ve been through things.
War-torn. Sun-blasted. Sandal-scorched.
Andy’s feet looked like they’d spent the week trekking across Mordor in budget flip-flops. Calluses like topographical maps. Cracked heels you could lose a coin in. Romantic? Not exactly. But inspirational? Weirdly, yes.
So, off we stumbled to a little local shop — you know the kind — where the air smells like oregano, the shelves are cluttered with mystery soaps and goat-themed magnets, and the lady behind the counter has seen some things. We picked up a black lava pumice stone (which sounds like it should come with a warning label), and olive oil moisturiser made from trees probably older than Western civilisation and donkey milk.
Yes. Donkey milk.
Andy, with all the poetic grace of a Greek philosopher raised on memes, immediately dubbed it: “Ass Cream.”
And thus began the most intimate, most ridiculous, and by far the funniest pedicure session of our lives.
What followed was, no exaggeration, the most bizarrely romantic experience of the entire trip.
A couple’s pedicure.
Not a euphemism.
An actual, scrub-your-feet, exfoliate-your-soul pedicure.
There we were, giggling like teenagers, attacking each other’s hobbit feet with volcanic rock and massaging in ancient Greek hydration like spa gods on a budget. We laughed so hard I nearly reinjured my liver.
Later, in between wind gusts strong enough to launch small children into the Ionian Sea, I did something else I haven’t done in years:
Read an entire book. In one day.
Eruption, by Michael Crichton and James Patterson. A ridiculous thrill ride of tectonic chaos and government conspiracy. Absolutely zero literary merit. Totally satisfying. Like eating a sleeve of Oreos while doomscrolling.
For lunch we went back to basics — the same meal we had on day one, at Amazones Village Suites**** only better.
Greek salad. (Or “village salad,” as they rightfully call it here, because nobody in Greece calls it a Greek salad unless they’re trying to sell it to tourists on the Danforth in Toronto.)
Crisp cucumbers. Tomatoes that actually taste like tomatoes. Kalamata olives. Feta that could bring a tear to your eye if you weren’t already crying from your hangover. And then the tzatziki. THE tzatziki. Best on the island. Creamy, garlicky, salty in the way only something hand-made by someone who’s been doing it for 50 years can be.
I asked Daria — our stunning hotel host, part goddess, part culinary oracle — what the secret was.
She smiled and said, “Salt. And garlic. Enough of both.”
Honestly? Words to live by.
Dinner. Oh, dinner.
If Dionysus ran a restaurant, it would look like Taverna Areston-Spanakis.
Taverna Areston-Spanakis — spoken about in hushed, reverent tones by locals who treat food not as nourishment, but as a way of life, a birthright, and a competitive sport.
Nikos, our barman, had already declared it the best food on the island. Daria practically fanned herself when she mentioned it. Even our cab driver paused mid-traffic rant to say, “Areston. That’s where we go. That’s the one.”
So we dressed like we meant it — a hint of effort, a whisper of SPF still clinging to our shoulders — and walked in with an appetite that could level cities.
The place was deceptively simple. No trendy lighting. No “rustic-chic” pretension. Just whitewashed walls, a view of the hills, a dog asleep under the corner table, and a constant stream of locals casually dropping by like it was their family kitchen.
And then came the waitstaff.
A phalanx of lean, sun-burnished Greek men in tight black golf shirts, each one looking like he just stepped off the set of a Mediterranean cologne ad. Efficient. Charming. Occasionally smirking — like they knew what was coming, and we did not.
We started with the House Mega Salad.
A name like that can go either way — fast food disaster or utter revelation.
This was the latter.
Fresh shredded lettuce and cabbage, cherry tomatoes bursting like tiny grenades of sweetness, cool cucumber, tangy figs and toasted walnuts drizzled with a balsamic-olive oil dressing that made you do shameful things with bread. It wasn’t just a salad. It was a statement. A green manifesto. Salad as performance art.
Then came the main event.
Roast lamb and potatoes.
But not just any lamb. Not the kind you find under a sad heat lamp at a buffet. This was wood-fired, slow-cooked, kissed by smoke and possibly the hands of Zeus himself.
The lamb fell apart at the mere suggestion of a fork. Moist, rich, infused with herbs and garlic and firewood and time. The kind of meat that makes you momentarily close your eyes and reevaluate your life choices.
The potatoes? Wedges of golden glory, roasted until their edges crisped just enough, and then left to marinate in the pan’s collective genius — lemon juice, meat drippings, a splash of olive oil, and the kind of saltiness that whispers, “Yes, this is how you die. Happy and full.”
We didn’t speak for ten minutes. Just slow, reverent chewing and the occasional grunt of approval. Andy even stopped mid-bite and said, “I think I love you more right now just for ordering this.”
I’m not religious. But I saw God in that plate.
Mouthgasm. Yes, I said it. I will say it again. MOUTHGASM.
I’m still dreaming about it, and frankly, I don’t want to wake up.
The wine was local, dry, crisp. The kind of house white that costs €6 and could compete with a £40 bottle in London. And of course, the meal ended the way all proper Cretan dinners should: with a complimentary carafe of raki, poured unceremoniously with a grin and a “you drink, yes?” from the waiter.
Yes.
We drank.
We worshipped.
We left spiritually altered.
As we stumbled home in that happy, olive-oil-and-raki haze, I realised this meal was going to live in my memory rent-free for the rest of my natural life. Not fancy. Not expensive. But honest, soul-hugging food. The kind of experience that makes you want to sell everything, move to a Greek village, and eat your way into citizenship.
Oh — and something weird happened.
We got recognised.
Andy and I were both stopped by strangers — different ones, separately — who read this blog.
They wanted to say hello. To talk. To connect.
And let me tell you, after years of shouting into the void of the internet, that moment hit different.
Humbling. Exciting. Terrifying in a “don’t-let-them-know-I-still-can’t-pronounce ‘tzatziki’” kind of way.
So from the bottom of our roasted, pumice-scrubbed, lamb-fat-glazed hearts:
Thank you.
If you see us, say hi. We’re the ones laughing too loudly, drinking something suspicious out of a coffee cup, and looking for the next place the locals go.
Crete, day eight:
Hangover. Foot scrub. Lamb ecstasy. Book binge. Stranger love.
Not a bad way to heal from the sins of day seven.
Not bad at all.
