Realisation strikes ...

It's a pretty desperate feeling, lugging my still-far-too-heavy bag ... the famous Venetian harbour or fort or fortified harbour or whatever it was looks more forbidding than attractive, and gives no impulse to visit it ...

I pass an old steam engine on three meters of track in the middle of a traffic roundabout: odd, there's no railway on Crete ...

Then I see a rather neat map of Crete on the wall of a shop, and wander in to have a closer look ... I get into conversation with the shop owner about where I might go on the island, he tells me all the reasons why hiring a car is better than struggling with buses, when anyway there are so few buses in the winter, the boats I was thinking of taking are only tourist things, the Cretans don't use them or need them, there are no year-round residents on any of the small islands off Crete itself ... and that his neighbour will let me have a car really cheap ...

I'm suddenly overwhelmed with the realisation that I do like driving, and I don't like being a passenger nor the insecurity of not knowing what the bus times are or how reliable they are, or waiting around for buses, or being limited to where I can go; and that it is actually my holiday, and I did make an unexpected 700 SKr / 70 USD on the currency-exchange transaction ...