Day 4: The Best Day Ever

Lost Beaches, Wedding Songs & Greece’s Highly Qualified Feline Hospitality Staff

Before coming to Greece, I was working on SpongeBob: The Musical.

Stay with me. This is relevant.

The opening number is called “The Best Day Ever,” and SpongeBob’s philosophy is basically that every day can be the best day ever. You’re alive. You’re surrounded by people you love. You’ve been given another day.

Therefore: Best. Day. Ever.

Squidward, naturally, finds this relentless optimism deeply irritating. As a lifelong member of Team Sarcasm, I have traditionally found Squidward’s position quite reasonable. But it turns out…SpongeBob might be onto something.

Today Will Be Better

After yesterday’s adventure in How Many Wrong Turns Can Two Functioning Adults Take Before One of Them Snaps?, Tim and I woke up determined that Day 4 was going to be better.

Not perfect. Just better. The bar was not particularly high.

First stop: The Red Bicycle. Because we had learned our lesson. Why gamble with breakfast when you’ve already found perfection?

Makis greeted us like old friends and seated us outside beneath the trees.

And then, as we sat down…our wedding song came on the radio.

Seriously.

Cue the collective: Awwwwwwww. Even I have to admit it was ridiculously sweet. Then the playlist shifted into what can only be described as the soundtrack to an ’80s high school movie. Which happens to be the decade when Tim and I first met. At this point, the universe was laying it on a little thick.

We get it, Universe. We’re adorable. Calm down.

Mission: Find the Beach We Somehow Lost

After breakfast, it was time to attempt something we had spectacularly failed to accomplish the day before.

Find our beach. Again.

This is a beach we have visited before. We knew approximately where it was. We remembered what it looked like. We remembered the drive. And yet somehow, yesterday, we couldn’t find it. This is one of the great mysteries of travel.

Fortunately, Past Kim came through. Past Kim, it turns out, had location services turned on in 2024. Future Kim rarely has anything nice to say about Past Kim. Past Kim forgets passwords. Past Kim puts important things somewhere “safe.” But Past Kim had geotagged a photograph. And today?

Past Kim was a HERO.

I found an old photo, noticed the name of the taverna in the location information, plugged it into Maps, and suddenly…

There it was. The beach had not moved. The Mediterranean had not secretly rearranged the coastline. No ancient Greek god had hidden it from us for sport.

We were the problem.

Again.

We had been approximately one “oops” away from finding it the entire time. We’d simply gone to the wrong side of Zorba’s Beach.

GPS: 1 – Humans: 0

Honestly, we’re getting used to losing.

And There It Was

We finally arrived at Sunset Bar & Taverna. Our beach. You rent a lounger. You order a drink. You stare at the Mediterranean. And then you begin the complicated process of forgetting you have responsibilities.

Emails? Never heard of them.

Laundry? Sounds fictional.

Work? I don’t understand the question.

We read. We swam. We ordered cold drinks. We watched the water. And we perfected one of my favorite things about being married to someone you’ve known for most of your life: comfortable silence.

There is something wonderfully peaceful about sitting beside your favorite person and not needing to fill the space.

• No conversation required.
• No itinerary.
• No entertainment.
• No need to make the moment into anything more than it already is.

Just Tim. Me. The Mediterranean. And absolutely nowhere else we needed to be.

Maybe SpongeBob was onto something after all.

What Meal Is This?

Around 4:00, we decided we should probably eat.

Lunch? Dinner? Snack? Linner? Dunch? Vacation Meal Number Three? Once vacation has destroyed your normal relationship with time, meals become less about traditional labels and more about asking:

“Are we hungry?” Yes. Excellent. Food.

We wandered over to the little beach café, where I immediately encountered a member of management.

A terrier.

He walked over, parked himself directly on my feet, and made his expectations perfectly clear. Ear scratches were required. Immediately.

Apparently there is a mandatory ear-scratch tax in this establishment. I paid in full. He remained on my feet. This seemed fair.

The Official Greek Hospitality Rankings

At this point, Tim and I have decided that Greek restaurants should no longer be judged solely on food, service, atmosphere, or location.

Those metrics are outdated.

The real question is:

What animals work there?

Current standings:

Voula, Hotel Cat
Permanently grumpy. Selectively affectionate. Runs the hotel through intimidation.
10/10. No notes.

Beach Terrier
Professional foot warmer. Excellent customer service. Accepts payment in ear scratches.
10/10. Would pay tax again.

Restaurant Cat at Throumbi
Clearly upper management. Delegates all actual labor to humans.
10/10. Strong leadership skills.

Frankly, Greece understands something the American hospitality industry has completely overlooked.

More cats.

Back to Daliani Street

That evening, we headed to Throumbi on Daliani Street. We’ve been here before. It has never disappointed us.

Great food. Great atmosphere. A beautiful evening. And, naturally…another cat. Supervising operations. I assume she was checking table turnover and monitoring portion control.

We ate. We talked. We watched the world go by.

And somewhere in the middle of it all, I realized something.

We hadn’t climbed a mountain. Nothing particularly extraordinary had happened that day. We hadn’t toured an ancient ruin. We hadn’t checked anything off a bucket list.

We ate breakfast. We found a beach. We read books. We scratched a dog’s ears. We had dinner.

That was it.

And it was absolutely perfect.

The Best Day Ever

Maybe that’s the trick. Maybe the best travel days aren’t always the ones packed with monuments and tours and carefully planned experiences.

Sometimes the best day is sitting beneath trees while your wedding song unexpectedly plays. Sometimes it’s discovering you’ve been looking for something that was right around the corner all along. Sometimes it’s floating in the Mediterranean beside the person you’ve known since you were teenagers. Sometimes it’s a terrier sitting on your feet. Sometimes it’s dinner beneath the lights of a little street in Chania while a cat silently judges your choices. And sometimes, after several days of jet lag, bad decisions, wrong turns, accidental naps, questionable breakfasts, and contemplating whether Venetian architecture could withstand the impact of an irritating tourist…you finally stop.

And realize: This is it.

You’re here. You’re with someone you love. The sun is shining. The water is blue. You’ve got another day.

And somehow, impossibly, wonderfully…it really is the best day ever.

Thanks, SpongeBob. You weird little sea sponge.

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