Blogs from Crete, Greece, Europe - page 36

Being our 34th anniversary, we wanted things to go well. I'd kept Manoli from knowing about my special Taste of Crete cooking class until today, just telling her that we were going to be busy Tuesday. While we waited for the 7:15am bus to Hania, I filled her in. More on that tomorrow. We needed to catch this bus to Hania and hope it wasn't too late to catch the 8:30 bus from Hania to Omalos and the Samaria Gorge. Well, when the bus finally arrived at 7:45am, I was doubtful. Happily, we made it to the Hania bus station by 8:20am, bought our tickets to Omalos/Samaria @7.50 Euros each and were on our way, finally. After a very harrowing trip up (2,000 meters I think), which I wouldn't recommend to the faint-hearted, we arrived at ... read more

Today we rented a car because Crete is kind of hard to navigate by bus. We drove about 45 minutes to Agios Nikolas, a harbour city. The highways are quite nice here with plenty of signs. We found out the lines on the roads are just a suggestion. People pass you at any time no matter who is coming in the other lane. The drivers expect you to merge over to the shoulder so they can pass. At Agios we took a boat trip to the island of Spinalonga. This was a leprocy colony during the 1900's. The last person left in 1958. Before that it was a venitian fortress. Then the turkish people took over. The island itself is very small. It took only 20 minutes to walk around the whole island. At one time ... read more

After capuccinos (not very good, but we'll have our own coffee tomorrow), we got the lowdown from Philia Tountas and paid the bill, 130 Euros for 5 nights... what a bargain! We decided to take the bus into Chania for the day, but after strolling thru Kalives (a very quaint seaside village with a nice beach), we waited for the bus, but it didn't come. Instead, we finished browsing the stores in Kalives and had lunch at Zolabas Taverna, where we had dikos (rusk toast with diced tomatoes and feta cheese), Manoli had tomato vegetable soup and I had feta stuffed long peppers. Very good, at less than 16 Euros with drinks, and we were entertained by their cats. After lunch, we returned to the apartment for rest and to unpack, then back out to stroll ... read more

So it has been a whole week since my last entry! I have actually been unable to reach a computer in that time, and Samaria Gorge seems like a long while ago. When I last wrote, we were just leaving Chania, to go to Kissamos Kastelli, a town on the west coast from which we could reach a few good beaches. Right after I wrote that entry we went to the tourist office and found out that those beaches are all inaccessible at this time of year. SO, we decided to go to Elafonisi instead. Elafonisi is a wonderful spot on the southwest corner of the island. When we first got off the ferry, we couldn't see any buildings at all; just low hills rolling up to the northerly mountains, all covered in dark green scrub, ... read more

We've finally made it out to Greece! So happy that me and Sam actually managed to see a plan through! We arrived at 5am on Sat morning, with our first 'hiccup' waiting for us. We were meant to be going to Hersonissos in Crete for the first week, but instead we found out that our apartments weren't actually going to be open for another 5 days - in true Greek fashion :-) So instead, we were offloaded onto........Malia. Not exactly the sort of place we envisioned starting our travels. Thankfully, we've been put in the Old Town part which is surprisingly interesting and a world away from the main tourist strip. One upside to this was that we were compensated and we chose a trip to Spinalonga, the famous leper colony island. We had a boat ... read more