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Polyrinnia
Another day another mountain to knock off Reminder: there are more photos below the text if you want to skip the diary details; and if you double click on any of the photos you will get an enlarged, clearer image. You can return to the text anytime.
Friday 11th May: a rather overcast day so we didn’t want to head directly to the beaches and instead went to one of our favourite places near Kissamos; the ancient site of Polyrinnia. It’s only 7 kms out of town and, even better, if one follows the road sign in the centre of Kissamos Polyrinnia is at the end of the road: no satnav required. Sadly, the cafe at the archaeological site wasn’t open so after we had climbed up to the acropolis and back we had to go elsewhere for lunch. We drove back to Kissamos and then headed 14 kms west to Falasarna and had lunch at a taverna we hadn’t tried before. It was ok but we probably won’t go back as there’s another taverna nearby which we know has better food. After lunch we had a walk on the beach but the wind was too strong for it to be enjoyable. Surprisingly, there were
Polyrinnia
mountain path quite a lot of people swimming on the main beach nearby; presumably having fun in the surf which was driven by the strong onshore wind.
Saturday 12th May: after the frustrations of the previous day we decided to head for the south coast to Sougia; somewhere we havn’t been to before. It’s off the main tourist routes because it’s quite difficult to get to via a relatively long and very tortuous mountain road. From Kissamos it was 58 kms / 36 miles but it took us one and a half hours to get there and involved crossing two mountain ranges. One of the (few) attractions with Sugia is the nearby ancient Roman port of Lissos, a walk of about one and a quarter hours from Sougia. We made it as far as the top of the descent to Lissos from where we had a great view over the site, which is very pretty. We decided against going down the steep hill to Lissos as we were already quite tired from the walk; coming on top of the quite tiring drive from Kissamos. So we headed back to Sougia for a late lunch at one of the tavernas
bordering the beach. Then it was a long drive back up the mountain, followed by quite a fast descent to a town called Kandanos, then back up another mountain range and finally a long descent to the northern coast at Kissamos. We may go to Sougia again some time in the future but would probably stay there overnight to avoid the very tiring drive. All in all good day.
Sunday 13
th May: over to the west coast to Elafonissi lagoon. This turned out to be a bad choice as the wind at Elafonissi was very strong and there was no shelter from it. However, that hadn’t stopped a lot of locals going there and swimming in what I thought was quite a cold sea; made to feel even colder by the strong winds. These Cretans are clearly made of sterner stuff than me. We decided to cut our losses and head back to Kissamos via lunch at a taverna near Elafonissi which served very nice home-grown green vegetables. A somewhat frustrating day made even worse by going to a beachside restaurant for dinner, being seated, then ignored for over ten minutes while customers who had arrived after us were
served. So we left and went for a very nice seafood dinner at another restaurant near our hotel.
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Richard Jenkins
non-member comment
You are obviously seeing the very rugged side of Crete now you know your way around. Loved the phots and weather looks OK as well despite the wind. Enjoy the rest of your stay. Love, Rich