Journey to the island of Crete
5-16 AUGUST 2015
DAY 1
Zurich - Heraklion
After a long flight from Zurich to Athens, we land at Heraklion, the airport on the island of Crete, around 7 pm. We take the previously booked car on rent and travel to our first hotel. We head east, where we will stay in a small village not far from Agios Nikolaos, lost in the hinterland. We leave our luggage in our hotel, mostly a series of rooms made from an old dwelling, not really comfortable. At 10 p.m. we wander around the small village of Kritsa, and enter the first tavern we find that seems a bit inviting. Excellent dinner with baked lamb, and Greek salad.
DINNER: Tavern Latṓ
We go back to the hotel, or rather, we break into our room through the window, which fortunately we had left open, as our guests have locked the main entrance and we could not enter through the door.
HOTEL: Argyro Rent Rooms
DAY 2
Southeast Crete
A poor and very expensive breakfast, not included in the price of the accommodation inaugurates the day. We reach the beach of Voulisma, a narrow strip of sand invaded by a row of umbrellas. We manage to carve out a space and we enjoy the first day of sea holiday. We return in the middle of the afternoon, and we take a walk in the city of Agios Nikolaos. Despite the rather enthusiastic descriptions, the center do not seem very picturesque.
A fairly anonymous town, mostly modern, and devoid of attractions. We park in a large space near the port, and walk to the center, between the streets of shops. With the exception of an out-of-context pond right in the city centre, surrounded by a high rock face on one side and a small pier with restaurants on the other, there is not much to visit. We console ourselves with a rich and varied dinner in a modest restaurant with tables on the street under a thick pergola.
DINNER: Sarris Taverna
DAY 3
South-East Crete
This side of the island does not offer many alternatives, and so we return to the same beach. We spend the morning here, and in the afternoon we wait at the hotel for the end of a thunderstorm before going to Heraklion to visit the historic site of Knosso. We walk among the remains of the Minoan site, among the frescoes and purple colonnades. The complex is very large, and takes a few hours to visit. Seeing live the remains captured in the photos of the history books is an experience not to be missed.
We return to the centre of Heraklion to visit the city, which although it does not offer great attractions, consists of some very picturesque neighborhood of Venetian legacy. We dine at sunset with a view of the fortress near the port, in a very cheap restaurant with an enviable location. The dinner on the seafront is definitely recommended, far from the crowds of the streets of the center, crowded with restaurants and cocktail bars.
DINNER: Ippokampos
DAY 4
South-West Crete
We get our suitcases ready to move to the West coast. We cross Heraklion again, where we stop for breakfast in a chain of bakeries that is worth at least a visit when in Crete. It is a small franchise that is located in multiple locations on the island, and that offers a wide choice of bread, delicious pies (of which we have stocked for lunch), pastries and Greek yogurt.
We extend the route to make a stop South of the island. We stop to swim for a few hours in the beach of Matala: it is a beach of coarse sand, very long and wide, populated by a few people. It is very hot compared to the beaches to the North, and the sea less calm, open to the south, with cold and rough waters.
BAKERY: Savoidakis
We head mid-afternoon to Rethymnon, a town on the northern coast. Along the way we visit the village of Spili, a characteristic little village with a shady central square and a Venetian fountain, the ideal place for a walk and a stop for a iced coffee. Rethymnon is a city with a Venetian imprint, extremely pleasant to visit. We walk through the streets of the centre, studded with shops, and visit the workshop-pastry shop of an elderly couple who work by hand the phyllo dough since a lifetime, to make excellent baklavas. They welcome us tenderly in their workshop and show us the machines, and a video explaining the processing, all in Greek and without mentioning a word of English. We understand each other very well to taste and buy some cakes to take away.
After having walked along the whole center up to the height of the fortress, we find a restaurant for the dinner just under the walls, on the seafront and we have a tasty fish dinner, of which we recommend the shrimp saganaki and the rolls of feta saganaki with fig jam.
We arrive late in the evening, traveling for over 2 hours, to Falasarna, where we will stay for a few nights. We have a small studio with kitchen and balcony on the hill overlooking the distant beaches.
RESTAURANT: En Plo Estiatorio | HOTEL: Kavoussi Resort
DAY 5
North-West Crete
Greek breakfast homemade by us, tasted on the balcony from where we already admire the vast and attractive white beach washed by the turquoise sea. We go right there for the day at the beach, alternating, in the afternoon, with another corner of this vast gulf, not too far away, just to change perspective.
DAY 6
North-West Crete
We wake up before dawn to arrive not too late at the remote beach of Elafonissi, a sandy tongue with shallow and quiet waters of a surreal color, bathing a flat expanse of pink sand. The journey to this paradise from Falasarna is about an hour and a half, but this ensures that in the early morning it is almost deserted. Behind the shore, a huge expanse of sand illuminated by vast puddles left by the night tide, perfect to carve out plenty of space to play frisbee.
DAY 7
North-West Crete
Another quiet day at the sea on the nearby beach of Falasarna, where there is a pleasantly quiet early morning. The first customers start to crowd the beach only around 10 a.m. We enjoy a long day at sea, and a beautiful sunset on the rocks west of the Gulf.
DAY 8
North-West Crete
We leave the apartment again, as for the last 3 nights we will be staying in Kissamos. We store our luggage in the car in the morning, and we head to the beach of Balos, a peninsula in the north-west of Crete characterized by a spur of rock connected to the mainland by a thin strip of white rock invaded by sand. A panoramic dirt road reaches this isthmus. From the car park we walk along the ridge that goes down to the beach for about half an hour, where we can enjoy exceptional views of the peninsula. This place is certainly more beautiful to admire from above, where you have the impression of a remote Caribbean corner. Actually what seems to be a beach of fine white sand is rock, and it is not very comfortable to lie in the sun. In addition, the beach is partially invaded by algae brought by the tide, as well as by groups of visitors who descend from tourist boats, periodically during the day.
In the late afternoon, with an hour's journey, we reach Chania. We have dinner with an excellent pita gyros eaten in a tiny and crowded place and we walk in the Venetian town.
HOTEL: Beach Studio Kissamos
DAY 9
Crete Centre
Wake up before dawn to return to Chania, where we board the bus to Omalos: from here begins the path that leads to the gorges of Samaria, a lush canyon in the hinterland of the island. We descend in about an hour into the gorge, crossing the river bed flanked by high rock walls. However, the weather gets worse as we proceed. To avoid a few drops of rain we stop in an abandoned village in the middle of the gorge, and we immediately resume the journey as the guides of other groups of visitors announce a thunderstorm coming.
Just as we enter the narrowest part of the gorges, we are caught by a torrential rain: the temperature drops rapidly, the gorge begins to overflow with water, as the stream that furrows it swells, quickly invading the path. Already soaked with water we stop at the shelter of a rocky spur, hoping that the rain will calm down, but soon we realize that it will not be so and that the path is rapidly becoming impassable. We resume the road, jumping from one boulder to another and trying to stay out of the stream in flood that comes above the knees. The rain lasted more than half an hour, from the walls of the canyon began to fall dangerous debris, definitely an unsafe situation in which I would not advise you to find yourself visiting the gorges. So check the weather forecast before you start the descent!
We reach the village at the end of the gorges completely wet, the backpacks dripping with water, including spare clothing, food and the camera, to which we say goodbye after inconclusive attempts to dry the water that had penetrated inside, irreparably. We wait in the port for the ferry connection, which will take us to the bus from the South coast back to Chania, trying to dry under the sun that came out after the storm.
DAY 10
North-West Crete
The idea of going with the first sun to take some photos of Elafonissi, obviously blew up. We reach the beach more calmly then and enjoy a full day at the beach. At sunset we return to Kissamos, stopping to eat in an inn that we meet along the street, in Sfinari. The tavern is set on the cliff above the road. We sit under a pergola and enjoy a dinner without being able to choose the courses. The menu consists of what the fisherman brought from the day at sea, and without even knowing what variety it is, we eat the tastiest grilled fish ever.
DINNER: Taverna da Antoni
DAY 11
North-West Crete - Zurich
We spend the day in Falasarna, this time at the North-East end of the gulf, an area rich in rocks. In the middle of the afternoon we store our suitcases in the car and we head to Rethymno, our favorite city on the island, where to spend the last evening. We visit the fortress (definitely not recommended) and we walk again for the center, snooping more carefully in the shops. We dine at the port, on the balcony on the first floor of a restaurant overlooking the pier. The balcony for two is very picturesque, a little less the dinner, overpriced and of medium quality. Our planes are leaving at 6:00 a.m. We spend the evening in the city, and then we get back on the road to get to Heraklion.
DINNER: Knossos Tavern
This content is NOT SPONSORED, but based on my genuine personal experience. Spontaneous opinions, positive and negative, shareable or not, that I hope will help to live better travel experiences. My advice is a guide to lead you through world explorations, but the real journey, you build it!
