After four nights in Chania, we drove about three hours east along the Sea of Crete back to Heraklion, our port of entry from the mainland. Heraklion is the largest city and main port of Crete. We planned to spend five nights here exploring the city and its surrounding area.
Our Airbnb was located in the hilly village of Episkopi, about 20 minutes southeast of Heraklion. It was an old village house that was recently renovated to include all of the modern amenities but still retain its rustic village charm. As a reminder of its proud origins, there were exposed areas where the original stone walls and wooden beams were visible.
There were several outdoor seating areas that were perfect for enjoying the sunset. The pool area that overlooked olive groves looked inviting. Unfortunately, we never had the chance to use the pool or enjoy the outdoor areas of the home because the weather turned rainy and overcast during most of our stay.
The home stayed cozy and warm despite the stonework because of an effective heating system. The weather was a great excuse to stay indoors and catch up on our learning and explore various interests. For a couple of weeks, the kids had been incessantly singing some silly sounding songs about Star Wars. After about the eight hundredth time hearing them sing the same song, it was really driving me crazy. I made numerous attempts to make them to stop singing. I think they were trying to tell me about the songs and why the songs were so cool, but it was hard to understand what they were talking about.
One rainy morning, RY pulled out his iPad and showed me the Youtube video of the song they had been singing, “Hostiles on the Hill”. After I watched it, I was absolutely speechless. It was mind-blowing. I admit, I’m not current on social media, Youtube and “trending” or “viral” videos and my excuse is that I haven’t been living in the US for the past 20 years.
What they showed me was so different from anything that I’ve ever seen, but I could immediately tell that it was something special. It doesn’t make me at all unique because I am one among the millions (billions) of people who have viewed and liked their videos.
“Hostiles on the Hill” is created by a person or group called “Bad Lip Reading” that has done a bunch of parodies of famous songs, speeches and public appearances by applying incorrect, sometimes nonsensical yet hilarious words, that match up with the movement of the speakers lips. Besides popular songs, they also like to parody politicians. It’s hard to explain but once you see it, it is undeniably, absurdly brilliant. Pretty soon, we were all singing the Bad Lip Reading songs together.
Inspired by the children’s interest in music, we began exploring acapella singing. We got the idea to do acapella since we don’t have any musical instruments but do have enough voices to put together a four-part harmony. We wasted a lot of time debating what song to sing and how to get the musical arrangement. In the end, we started working on an acapella version of “Shape of You” by Ed Sheeren. We’ll see how that turns out.
Besides listening to and making music, the chilly weather was conducive to cooking and baking our favorite comfort foods. We were all craving AY’s cinnamon rolls, which she hadn’t made since South Africa. She decided to roll the dough out thinner this time and the result was both beautiful and delicious.
One night, we made dumplings with minced pork and Chinese cabbage filling. Our first time making homemade dumplings in Chania just a week ago was so fun that we decided to do it again. AY was in charge of making the dumpling wrappers again and the overall appearance of our dumplings improved significantly.
The next morning, we used the leftover dumplings to make pot stickers. Leo and AY surprised us with pear and honey hand pies made from local fruit, honey and the leftover dough from the dumplings.
Woohoo! All caught up again!