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Published: August 15th 2008
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6 hours on the ferry. The ferry was almost identical to the last, but this one had rows and rows of bench seats on the deck which made for a more comfortable sleep.
We arrived in Heraklion, Crete expecting to find a guy with a sign and a van, ready to drive us to his hotel. We walked off the ferry in the crowd and saw nothing. Nothing but friends and family waiting for others. No guy, no sign, nowhere to stay. Just a lousy Lonely Planet map, which didn't specify where we were in relation to anything.
We made our way to the main road, saw a sign saying city center pointing straight ahead. Half of the fellow ferry passengers went right, the rest straight. Again it was stinking hot and we just wanted to go somewhere so straight it was, towards the city center. At this stage we didnt really know where we were heading. We thought if we found internet we would be fine, or even a place selling decent maps. Turns out Heraklion isnt such a touristy places and we could see why. Dirty busy streets and nothing that took our interest.
The "plan"
had been to stay there one night and head to Chania the next day. After walking up a long steady slope with our bags on our backs and not finding anything of use, i asked someone to show us where we were on the map in my book. He pointed down off the page and said, "somewhere around here". Great we wern't even on the map. So we continued walking to the city center. After another sweaty hike i asked another guy, he gave us directions to an internet cafe. 10min later we were there. We found a better map and realised that if we had gone right, not straight we would have been at the main bus station and pretty much in the city center in about 5 sec! Awesome!
We decided Heraklion was a hole and that we didnt even want to be there for the night. After looking for places in Chania and seeing the prices we started to question the whole of the Greek Islands. Finally i pointed to a random place on the map, half way to Chania from Heraklion, called Rethymno. We started to research it and found a place for 30 Euro
Kell & I
Sunset in Rethymno a night, double, private ensuit, sold.
There was one thing we still wanted to do in Heraklion though, see the Temple of Knossos. Kell had studied it at school. So we made our way to the bus station where we could leave our luggage and get the bus to Knossos. The Temple was abosulety packed with tourists, worse than the Parthenon. There were tour groups going round in every language, lines to look through windows. Absolute chaos! Makes things really hard to enjoy in that kinda of atmosphere. So we walked to the back, found some shade and sat. It was at this stage that Kell alerted me to her feet. They looked like the feet of a chubby 12 year old, you could literally feel the fluid inside. We decided it wasn't worth hanging around to see her feet explode and made our way back to the bus station.
We got to Rethymno in the late afternoon, and soon realised that the bus station was a fair walk from the center of town. After more help from randoms on the street we found our place. All we could think about was air-con. We got inside and there
Beach Volleyball
This photo was taken around 11:30pm. They do things late here. on a small desk sat a sad looking fan, no air-con, one window that opened onto the stairwell that everyone uses to get into the place, which meant if someone turned the light on we had light fill the room. Despite this we were happy because from what we saw on the walk in, Rethymno was actually just what we were looking for. Quiet cobble stone streets, old beautiful buildings and it had a good vibe.
Once we had showered and changed we went to check the beach. Our place was called Sea Front, and that it was. The front door opens onto the restaurant strip and across the road was the beach. An old Venetian harbour, hugged by a larger newer habour, made a nice place to lay on the beach. Beyond the harbour was a huge beach with some surf, but covered in umbrellas and beach chairs, much like Santorini. That side of Rethymno is the new town, full of hotels overlooking the water. Think a developing Gold Coast. We decided to stick to our small harbour! Aside from the old harbour there was a huge fortress on the hill, which looked like fun to explore.
Boat and Harbour
A boat in the old Ventian Harbour. After debating when to leave and where to go we decided that Rethymno was to good to leave right away. We ended up staying 5 nights and made friends with some shop and cafe owners.
Our last day on Crete we spent in Chania and realised that we had hit the jackpot in Rethymno. Alot more touristy, Chania lacked the charm of Rethymno and the harbour was nothing special. On top of this we had a sketchy guy follow us for a while till we both turned around and stared at him, and another guy come up to us asking if it was our first time in Chania and if we had a camera and wanted a photo with him. Yeah right!
We got the ferry from Chania at 23:30, we were heading back to Athens and planning to go to Turkey. All in all very happy with the time we spent on Crete.
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Richard
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keep bloggin
yo nick! keep blogging. so much fun to read. fucken hilarious. good commentary