Holiday in Crete
This may get a little long, so I'll
We flew out to Crete on a 7 a.m. flight. Needless to say, we were somewhat tired by this. As this was a package holiday, we were met by a convenient coach to our hotel, which was just as well, as said hotel was in the middle of nowhere.
We stayed in a little village called Kamisiana, which is west of the old capital of Crete, Chania. After doing a bit of unpacking, we wandered around the village (into one of the neighbouring ones), looking for a shop and checking out potential places to eat that night. We found a little shop that sold us some very hard, large bits of 'bread' for our breakfast, along with a few other essentials. The people there spoke some english and were very friendly. We ended up at the taverna run by the same people that night, where we had a large quantity of nice food :-)
The hotel we were staying at was the Castalia Apartments. This was quite a pleasant, quiet place to stay (except for the darned cockerels!) - admittedly not very flash, but comfortable.
We slept in the next day, then lay around the pool waiting for our tour rep to turn up (3 p.m. - talk about breaking up the day), booked a few tours, then went back to chilling.
That evening, we went on a tour of the Chania area which included the English cemetery at Souda bay (a lot of unknown graves there - very well maintained) and the Venizelos memorial (the statesman behind the unification of Crete and Greece), along with Chania itself. Our tour guide was slightly on the nutty side, and we wondered why, in Chania, she dragged us into a mosque which was housing an art exhibition. We found out when she demonstrated the acoustics by singing to us :-). That night we ended up eating in a ruined Venetian house!
The next day we picked up a hire car (a little Fiesta that Karen loved driving) and promptly started driving across most of Crete west of Chania. This included Falassarna in the northwest and Elafonisos in the southwest.
On Friday, we drove over to Rethymnon. This was quite a bit more touristy than Chania, although there were a few shops that were of better quality. This city has the remains of a massive Venetian fortress, although the Turks managed to take it in 23 days.
One thing about driving in western Crete. The roads are very variable in quality. What is marked as a major road can sometimes go down to a single lane, and many of the roads are narrow and winding. The sole exception that we drove along was the national highway, that in many places was equivalent to a wide, normal road (occasionally being a dual carriageway).
For the Saturday, we went to the archaeological site at Gortys. What is unusual about these sites is that the Cretans seem to be more interested in restoration than preservation. This shows here with a modern building incorporating the law code blocks originally at this site. By modern, I mean that it was built recently, to the style of the surroundings.
At this point we made the mistake of going to the current capital, Heraklion. This is a very touristy place, that was very hard to get out of. The signposts were poor, hidden, and in some places you had a hard time believing they were accurate (although they were). While trying to find our way back to the national road, we found it hard to believe that the signs were taking us down narrow roads with barely enough room to evade the parked cars.
We returned the car Saturday night, as for Sunday we'd booked a tour of Samaria gorge. This was a walk down the largest gorge in Crete. It was supposed to take 4 to 6 hours for most people. Karen demonstrated that she's tougher than she looks by setting a pace that got us through it in just under 4 hours (that's with me slowing her down!)
When we got to the end, we were due to wait at the sea for the guide to catch us up, and then take a boat to a nearby town that the coaches could get to. However, the weather had other ideas, as the wind drove the waves up and over the jetty. We hung around in one of the restaurants, waiting for word of transport, wondering if we were going to be stuck there for the night (apparently this had happened 3 years before to 1200+ people), until the restaurant owner got word that the captain of the boat was feeling energetic, and was going to get us all out regardless. He did it as well, although the boarding had the feel of a wartime evacuation as the tour guides struggled to maintain control.
When we finally got on a coach, and it set off, the guide pointed out that the hill ahead now resembled a christmas tree. This was due to the 48 coaches all driving up the same narrow, winding single lane road!
Our last day was considerably more sedate. We wandered into Chania to do some shopping, then went to a Greek night where there was singing and dancing. The dancing had some similarity to the stereotypical Russian dancing, with the high kicks, but the comparison isn't very good.
All in all, the holiday was a good break. Karen and I didn't kill each other. We did a lot (Karen demonstrating that in no way is she a beach bunny - we never actually got to the beach near the hotel). We got to see quite a bit of Crete, tried various bits of Greek food, and generally enjoyed ourselves.
We flew out to Crete on a 7 a.m. flight. Needless to say, we were somewhat tired by this. As this was a package holiday, we were met by a convenient coach to our hotel, which was just as well, as said hotel was in the middle of nowhere.
We stayed in a little village called Kamisiana, which is west of the old capital of Crete, Chania. After doing a bit of unpacking, we wandered around the village (into one of the neighbouring ones), looking for a shop and checking out potential places to eat that night. We found a little shop that sold us some very hard, large bits of 'bread' for our breakfast, along with a few other essentials. The people there spoke some english and were very friendly. We ended up at the taverna run by the same people that night, where we had a large quantity of nice food :-)
The hotel we were staying at was the Castalia Apartments. This was quite a pleasant, quiet place to stay (except for the darned cockerels!) - admittedly not very flash, but comfortable.
We slept in the next day, then lay around the pool waiting for our tour rep to turn up (3 p.m. - talk about breaking up the day), booked a few tours, then went back to chilling.
That evening, we went on a tour of the Chania area which included the English cemetery at Souda bay (a lot of unknown graves there - very well maintained) and the Venizelos memorial (the statesman behind the unification of Crete and Greece), along with Chania itself. Our tour guide was slightly on the nutty side, and we wondered why, in Chania, she dragged us into a mosque which was housing an art exhibition. We found out when she demonstrated the acoustics by singing to us :-). That night we ended up eating in a ruined Venetian house!
The next day we picked up a hire car (a little Fiesta that Karen loved driving) and promptly started driving across most of Crete west of Chania. This included Falassarna in the northwest and Elafonisos in the southwest.
On Friday, we drove over to Rethymnon. This was quite a bit more touristy than Chania, although there were a few shops that were of better quality. This city has the remains of a massive Venetian fortress, although the Turks managed to take it in 23 days.
One thing about driving in western Crete. The roads are very variable in quality. What is marked as a major road can sometimes go down to a single lane, and many of the roads are narrow and winding. The sole exception that we drove along was the national highway, that in many places was equivalent to a wide, normal road (occasionally being a dual carriageway).
For the Saturday, we went to the archaeological site at Gortys. What is unusual about these sites is that the Cretans seem to be more interested in restoration than preservation. This shows here with a modern building incorporating the law code blocks originally at this site. By modern, I mean that it was built recently, to the style of the surroundings.
At this point we made the mistake of going to the current capital, Heraklion. This is a very touristy place, that was very hard to get out of. The signposts were poor, hidden, and in some places you had a hard time believing they were accurate (although they were). While trying to find our way back to the national road, we found it hard to believe that the signs were taking us down narrow roads with barely enough room to evade the parked cars.
We returned the car Saturday night, as for Sunday we'd booked a tour of Samaria gorge. This was a walk down the largest gorge in Crete. It was supposed to take 4 to 6 hours for most people. Karen demonstrated that she's tougher than she looks by setting a pace that got us through it in just under 4 hours (that's with me slowing her down!)
When we got to the end, we were due to wait at the sea for the guide to catch us up, and then take a boat to a nearby town that the coaches could get to. However, the weather had other ideas, as the wind drove the waves up and over the jetty. We hung around in one of the restaurants, waiting for word of transport, wondering if we were going to be stuck there for the night (apparently this had happened 3 years before to 1200+ people), until the restaurant owner got word that the captain of the boat was feeling energetic, and was going to get us all out regardless. He did it as well, although the boarding had the feel of a wartime evacuation as the tour guides struggled to maintain control.
When we finally got on a coach, and it set off, the guide pointed out that the hill ahead now resembled a christmas tree. This was due to the 48 coaches all driving up the same narrow, winding single lane road!
Our last day was considerably more sedate. We wandered into Chania to do some shopping, then went to a Greek night where there was singing and dancing. The dancing had some similarity to the stereotypical Russian dancing, with the high kicks, but the comparison isn't very good.
All in all, the holiday was a good break. Karen and I didn't kill each other. We did a lot (Karen demonstrating that in no way is she a beach bunny - we never actually got to the beach near the hotel). We got to see quite a bit of Crete, tried various bits of Greek food, and generally enjoyed ourselves.