This was our first night on the island, Greece’s biggest. Our boys, Apollo, 17, and Asa, 14, had just finished what to all of us felt like an especially long school year. So we made a deal: a week in Crete but light on the ruins and history, heavy on the beaches and the extraordinary food, and lots of “chill” (read: screen) time.
We ventured there in mid-June, before the worst of the heat waves hit Europe, draining energy supplies (and people) and sparking wildfires, including a few on Crete. But our trip didn’t go entirely smoothly either. Few do. Fifteen minutes before a taxi to the airport pulled up to our home in London, Courtenay, my wife, looked at an email from our hotel, started tapping and swiping furiously on her phone and then fixed her eyes on me.
“Did you know that Malia Beach is considered the party capital of Crete?” she asked.
(Malia Beach was where I had booked us, last minute.)
“Party capital?” I grunted, fighting a zipper on my bag. “What does that really mean, anyway?”
“It means it’s the center of the lads’ holidays,” she said. “It means you didn’t do enough research.”