Road Trip Day #2: Maria's Agios Georgios monopoly and the "Insert Coin" girl

The last stop on the second day of our Cretan road trip adventure was the small village of Agios Georgios on the Lasithi Plateau.

We'd spent a fair while the previous evening in Anogia trying to find somewhere to stay, so we were delighted when almost as soon as we reached the village I spotted a sign for Hotel Maria, where we hoped to stay.

This triumphant feeling wore off a little later, when we realised that Hotel Maria had a monopoly on accommodation in the area and I had spotted one of about 50 signs pointing in its general direction.

It was a really nice place, and so we dumped our stuff and freshened up, before heading out to find some food.

There were only two tavernas on the main street, and we headed to Taverna Rea, which is run by the Maria from her eponymous Hotel. Since everybody was staying in Hotel Maria, it seemed everyone went to Taverna Rea. We felt a bit sorry for the other taverna, which looked perfectly good and had an amazing array of Cretan nick-nacks inside. If we had been staying a second night in Agios Georgios we would definitely have paid it a visit.

We had hoped to sit in Taverna Rea's courtyard, but with it being low season, there were only a few tables set up out the front. It wasn't the most picturesque of views - watching the local tweenagers scaling the fence of their school and then running around playing football, whooping and hollering for a couple of hours. But, Claire said, at least it was live entertainment. Well, at least it was live, anyway.

One of the kids was wearing a t-shirt with the message "Love is a game. Insert coin". She was obviously too young, and we suspect her parent's English was too poor, for any of them to appreciate how inappropriate the innuendo was at her age.

We laughed though.