We are finishing out the summer with a really lovely trip to Croatia and Greece. Our good friend Richard had plannea destination birthday to celebrate his 60th in the homeland of his mother. Neither Bill or I had been to Croatia before but have heard lots of wonderful things from people we knew who had been. It did not disappoint. We spent a week with friends in this lovely part of the world enjoying great food and beautiful surroundings all enveloped in the warm Mediterranean climate.

After a complete bait and switch with an unsavory hotelier in Split and several hours on the phone trying to sort it out, we decided to head to Greece a little earlier than planned where we visited the northern city of Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city. Because I am Greek, I believe I have the right to say this, but the Greeks certainly were not paying attention to city planing and urban design when this city boomed in the mid-century. Horrific soviet-style brutalist architecture dominates the city, visually litters the beautiful coastline and like Athens, is just not 'user friendly'. Of note was the intense amount of graffiti everywhere, which added to the general sense of decay and depressed feeling. The upside is that there is really good food in Thessaloniki and it has its place as modern Greece's gastronomic capital.

From Thessaloniki we flew to Crete where we now have been several times. We love Crete for its beautiful waters, rugged landscape and very friendly inhabitants. This trip we spent some time as tourists seeing things and places we never have before, but also tried to live as locals exploring local farmers markets and cooking at home. We really tried to get the sense of what it might be like to stay here for extended periods of time, which is our plan in retirement and we loved it. We've met some locals and really feel like we would like spending time there.

Our return took us through Frankfurt where we spent one night, but still managed to take an Uber from our airport hotel (via the autobahn where our driver was doing 90+!!!!) to a quaint old part of downtown where we enjoyed some German food and pastries.

As always, it's good to be home, but as always looking forward to the next trip.