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Our hotel in Iraklion was right near where we had to pick up the ferry so that was really convenient.  The term ferry isn’t even really appropriate since it was one of the modern catamaran style ships where you can barely tell you’re traveling through the water.  After about two hours we were in Fira on Santorini.

Our hotel here is a large series of villas, with pools scattered around, a restaurant, and a poolside bar.  It’s great!  The shops and restaurants are all situated on the west facing cliffs, which afforded us what has to be one of the best dinner sunsets in the world.

Tomorrow we’re hopping on a boat to hike around the volcano!

Had a nice breakfast at the hotel and walked over to the bus station to catch a short ride to Knossos Palace. It’s actually more of an archaeological site than a palace since it’s about 4,000 years old. It was home to the Minoan Kingdom and was one of the early advanced civilizations in the world. It was interesting, but there wasn’t all that much to see. I think we were done in about an hour and a half. Most of the actual archaeological finds are housed in the museum near our hotel, but it has apparently been under renovation for years and years and only a small portion of it is open. (It’s supposed to be one of the best museums in Greece). Three hour ferry ride to Santorini in the morning! Six days of beaches! Did I mention it’s still in the 70s here?

Said goodbye to Chania and took a four hour bus ride east to the capital of Crete, Iraklion.  Our hotel is really nice and they upgraded our room without us even asking since they knew it was our honeymoon.  We’ve got a balcony looking out to the sea again, but this time it’s on top of a tall building and is big enough to walk around on.  The hotel also has a great restaurant on a rooftop patio that looks out to the Mediterranean.  I’m a little sad that we’re only here for two nights.  Tomorrow we’re going to see some historic sites and on Sunday morning we’re catching a ferry to Santorini.

We had grandiose ideas of waking up at 6:30am to catch a bus out of town to do some hiking.  We both got a little too much sun at the beach the day before and I was lucky enough to pick up Cindy’s cold/cough so when 6:30 rolled around we decided more sleep was in order.  We spent the day wandering around town, going to their market, which is not unlike the Milwaukee Public Market and doing a little shopping.  The view from our room is good enough that I don’t have a problem spending vast amounts of time sitting on our balcony.  This is our last night in Chania and tomorrow we move on to Heraklion for two nights before heading to Santorini.

Had a great breakfast at our hotel, the Porto Vesuviano.  We tried to walk to the bus station, but ran out of time to catch the only bus to Elafonissi and hailed a cab.  The beaches were amazing and the geography is very similar to northern California and the western US.  The bus had to navigate all of these narrow mountain roads where you are feet away from a thousand foot drop and it reminded me of going into the backwoods of Idaho to go rafting.

After twenty four hours and three flights we landed in Crete.  Too tired for much more than a stroll around and some dinner (fresh seafood).  Room has a balcony that opens right onto the Mediterranean. Two hour bus ride to the beaches at Elafonisi.

College football rankings, the BCS, and determining who will play for a national title are a lot like the health care debate.  Everyone (ok, almost everyone) agrees something needs to be done, but what, and how?  My friends, I bring you The Ultimate College Football Solution.

1 – Get rid of the polls as they exist today.  No voting.  Your ranking should be determined by your win percentage.

2 – Eliminate non-conference games.  I’m looking at you Penn State and Florida.  This of course generates a new problem since not all conferences have the same amount of teams.  Or does it?  The smallest conference basically would set the amount of regular season games played in a season.  For example, Wisconsin would have to play ten games to get through the entire Big Ten conference whereas another school might only have to play eight games.  The season then becomes eight games long for everyone, which is actually fine since right now Wisconsin doesn’t end up playing everyone in a season anyway.  This would shorten the regular season and leave plenty of room for some playoffs.  For those who will whine about only eight games, hey, if your team is worth watching they should make the playoffs.  All of the second place conference teams can square off in an NIT bowl tournament if they want to.  Non-conference games could stick around, too, but only if they’re played on a system where everyone plays everyone and schools don’t get to pick their opponents.

3 – The winners of every conference get to square off in a battle royale of NCAA Fall Madness.

4 – Self evident, but no more BCS!