Crete!

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We arrive at Crete airport and caught a taxi to our hotel. Fortunately the hotel was very close to the airport, so it only cost us €15. We checked in and spent the afternoon relaxing as we had been up since 2:30 that morning. That night we headed out to find some dinner, but because it was the equivalent of a Christmas Day holiday, nothing was open. We eventually found a small mini market that was open and got some food and made sandwiches for dinner. After a pretty unfulfilling dinner, we settled down for the night, ready for the next day.

Tuesday arrived and we got up pretty late after a big day travelling the day before. By the time we were ready to go out, it was lunch time. So with that, we wandered down the road and found a great Greek style restaurant (obviously!!!) and had a huge meal for under €10. After lunch we walked down to the city centre, which was only about a 10 minute walk from the restaurant and 20 minutes from the hotel. We saw one of the Forts from Ancient Roman times that would have been used to warn against enemy ships approaching. Afterwards, we headed up to one of the main shopping streets and did a bit of souvenir shopping. Sarah also, after seeing many of these around Europe, got her feet cleaned by some fish. Yes I think it’s weird too, you’re not alone! What happens is that you put your feet into this tank and all these tiny fish eat all the dead skin off our feet, leaving you with really smooth feet. My question is, how bad you have to be, to come back as one of these fish in your next life! After her fishy foot treatment, Sarah and I walked further up the street and got some ice cream. By this time for some reason, everything was starting to close so we made our way back to the hotel for a nap.

The next day, we were both pretty exhausted mainly from the heat, but also because we had been going and going nonstop. So instead of doing anything touristy, we spent the day sleeping and watching TV.

Thursday came, and feeling pretty refreshed from doing sweet nothing the day before, we decided to go to the beach. We left the hotel at around 10am and caught the bus to the closest beach to Heraklion, which was 30 minutes away at a town called Agia Pelagia. After getting off the bus and walking another half an hour down a pretty steep hillside, we reached the beach. The beach was amazing and we spent most of the day and afternoon there. There is a manmade rock barrier that lets the kids swim in the shallows without being pulled out and a deeper area for snorkelling and swimming. After spending hours in the sun, we went to a local restaurant and had some dinner. Unfortunately my chicken wasn’t cooked so that was a bit of a downer but thankfully I didn’t eat that much of it before realising. After dinner, we headed back up the hill and caught a bus back to Heraklion.

Our last full day in Crete was another exciting one, because we decided to get a little bit of a history lesson! We jumped on a bus at around 10:30 to Knossos. Now for those of you who either hated history or didn’t pay attention (or both!), Knossos was the centre of the Cycladic Empire during the 17th Century BC. An “ancient” ancient Rome if you will. Here we found the ruins of the Old and New Palace (yes I thought they could have come up with something a little more impressive too!) But anyway, we found the ruins and spent about an hour wandering around seeing the sights. Although these palaces aren’t as old as the Cycladic Empire itself, they do date back to 2200BC and 1700BC. After learning all about how awesome Crete used to be, we had some lunch and got some souvenirs and gifts for people. Then we jumped on the bus and headed back to Heraklion to pack and getting ready for our travel the next day.

We left our hotel at 6am the next morning and caught our bus to the airport. After checking in and getting our boarding passes to Santorini, we headed to the departures lounge. We got on the flight to Athens which eventually would connect us to Santorini, but not after a 4½ hour wait to actually catch the connection. After finally getting on our plane to Santorini, we arrived at the stunning Greek island, which is famous for the blue and white buildings you see on postcards.

But that’s enough for now, I’ll post more about Santorini in a week or so.

Sorry there are no photo's on this one guy's. The internet is ridiculously slow at the moment.
Check Sarah's facebook in a week or two and they should be up!

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