Elle Takes Europe 2026 - Day 18: Fully Booked
After another relaxing day in Crete, today we reached our final full day here. Tomorrow we board a plane to Paris, and the following day we fly home. Today was all about soaking up as much of our final full day of vacation as we could. We made it to breakfast a bit earlier this morning and found it to be a far more relaxing experience. Elle continued to eat quite well, and Jenn and I enjoyed our freshly made omelet. After breakfast, we made our way back down for our final visit to the beautiful pool. Elle is now a seasoned pool goer and Jenn and I did a lot of taking turns playing with her. Jenn’s approach is a bit calmer and more methodical than mine, but our combination makes for a fun morning. We spent the last hour (Elle was clearly over it) on our loungers sipping a pina colada and having our final pool pizza.
Jenn and Elle napped this afternoon, and I caught up on my daily posts, which I had been falling behind on. Outside of Elle’s beautiful smile in the pool each day, the thing I’ll miss the most about Crete are the two hours on our balcony where I get to edit photos and write these posts overlooking the ocean. Pretty spectacular.
We had originally planned to go into town for our final dinner in Crete, but when both Elle and Jenn woke up from their naps, we realized that if we could, we’d prefer to stay at the hotel. Jenn called down, and after originally being told that all the restaurants were fully booked (like they had been each night since we’d been there), that they could squeeze us into the Italian restaurant that we had lunch at on our first day. We made the long walk to the restaurant and arrived a few minutes before 6 PM, and were told they’d open in a few minutes. When they opened, they told us we didn’t have reservations and that they were fully booked. We looked around at an empty restaurant and pushed back, and they “squeezed” us in. Ironically, by the time we left a little after 8 PM, there were only a few tables occupied in the entire restaurant (inside and out). Fortunately, it was water under the bridge, and we had a great final dinner. We started off with their bread and olive oil, and got Elle another bowl of pasta. For Jenn’s main, she had the steak, and I had the chicken. Both were phenomenal. We ended dinner with a little gelato.
On our way back to the room we stumbled upon a bubble activity for young kids. Elle loves bubbles and although she was pretty trepidatious around all the kids and the amount of bubbles she began to ease into it. Jenn held close to her side the entire time but after a little she started to have a blast. When the bubble experience ended we continued the walk back to our hotel room. Ironically we’ve tried to take Elle to the tennis courts every time we past them and tonight was the first time they were ever free. I guess this hotel attracts a lot of tennis players (including Patrick Mouratoglou who we saw at the pool today), but tonight it was finally free. They had equipment on the court so Jenn and I got to hit a couple of rallies and I got to practice with Elle for a few minutes as well. I hope one day the three of us are able to go on vacation and play tennis together, that would be a dream come true.
I couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful tennis court to end our time in Crete with. We made our way back to our hotel room, ate some chocolate from turndown, packed our bags, and got ready for a long journey home. Tomorrow we will fly to Paris and stay at the Sheraton in the airport, and the following day we have our 11+ hour flight home. Given that this is the last day's recap, I just want to say how proud I am of Jenn and me. Elle was incredible throughout our trip, but the difficulty level of doing a 3-week trip with a 2-year-old versus last year with a 1-year-old was exponentially harder. Elle has more opinions and more needs than she did a year ago, and unsurprisingly had a few meltdowns. But Jenn and I managed, we adjusted our schedules and expectations, and did a great job working as a team. Jenn was right (as she normally is) that we just needed to truly capture the highs of each day, and when I look back, the memories that the three of us as a family created will last a lifetime. We are so lucky to have each other, and now experiencing the world through Elle’s eyes has made these experiences even more special. We joked that maybe we’d slow down traveling next year with how tired we were by the trip, but at dinner tonight, we’ve already started to scheme about what next year’s trip could be. Until then, we will never forget the incredible memories of Elle’s second trip to Europe and how lucky we were to share them together.
