Blogs from Crete, Greece, Europe - page 8

Our travels focused on the west and SW of Crete: Chania, Sougia and Loutro Chania has an old city centre which although quite touristy, has a real charm. It was our introduction to the island with some great, and inexpensive, food. We then headed to the southern coast to enjoy some strenuous walking. Samaria is a 16 km gorge which ends on the coast. Several other hikes were coastal paths, parts of E4, with panoramic views along the coast. Sometimes the walks ended with a swim and a boat ride back to the start. At Marmara beach, when the rain had set in, the local taverna owner invited us all into the kitchen out of the rain and turned up the music! Hilarious! With beers and Raki too! Loutro was a really delightful, boat access only ... read more

Note: there are more photos below the text if you want to skip the diary. Also, if you double click on any of the photos you will get an enlarged image and you will be transferred to the photo gallery where you can scroll through all the photos. You can return to the text anytime. Tuesday 18th April, our last full day in the Kissamos area. As we didn't want to travel too far and, also, to get some exercise we decided to walk part of the Topolia Gorge and to have a look at the cave shrine close to the southern entrance of the Gorge. It was less than 10 miles from our hotel to the Gorge and we stopped to take some photos at a car park near the northern entrance of the single ... read more

A few posts ago I detailed my incredible engagement in Zanzibar, and so I thought I would write a little bit about my overseas wedding. We got married on the 2nd September, 2016, outside a teeny Greek orthodox church in Hersonnisos, Crete. Now, how we came about choosing Crete and the whole getting married abroad thing is a long and convoluted story so I will cut it down as much as possible. So, why Crete? Well originally our plan was to elope and get married, just the two if us, somewhere incredible and far flung and appear back home as a married couple, however, my parents smelled a rat and got very very upset about this as they had envisaged a church wedding at home for me. I could never image getting married at home in ... read more

Reminder: lots more photos below the text, two pages in fact, if you want to skip the boring details. You can return to the text anytime Blog 4 Tuesday 11thOctober: the return to Hersinossos. After bidding a fond farewell to the Sitia Bay Hotel we retraced our journey to Hersinossos. The weather was overcast and very hazy i.e. no good for photos, and the journey through the mountains from Sitia didn’t take as long as the outbound journey: just one and half hours to Ayios Nikolaos (known as Ag Nik to the Brits). We stopped there for a look around and for lunch as Ag Nik is reputed to be one of the top places to stay in Crete. We weren’t impressed, except by the prices which were significantly higher than further east. It’s very built ... read more

Crete 2016.2 Blog 2 Note: if you double click on any of the photos you will get an enlarged image and you will be transferred to the photo gallery where you can scroll through all the photos. You can return to the text anytime by going to the control bar at the top of the page where it shows: Europe » Greece » Crete » Sitia » Blogs » Crete 2016.2 Blog 2 then click on Crete 2016.2 Blog 2 Thursday 6th October: the big drive to Sitia. We’d booked a hotel in Sitia in the far east of Crete for three nights in order to allow us to roam around this part of the isl... read more