Crete: Land of Good Times

We had a tough time leaving Santorini, because it was fab, but we were looking forward to Crete, and boy did it pay off!

We started our Cretan adventure with a ferry to Heraklio and a bus on to Rethymno. Rethymno? Adorable. There is a little ruined fortress to climb around on, and a gorgeous Venetian harbor. An aside here to help clarify, Crete is an island that has been passed around a lot. It was under Venetian rule for about 400 years (hence cute harbors, etc.), then it was under Ottoman rule for a couple hundred (hence pretty mosques and hamams), then it was Egyptian for a little while in the 1800’s (they spiffed up everyone’s previous works), theeeen it was Greek. I mean, if you ask them they were always Greek, but you know what I mean. We had a lovely couple of days here, enjoying the Cretan specialties (tasty soft goat cheese, wild greens, yogurt & honey, lots of raki (firewater, yup, it tastes like burning)), hanging out and laughing about the fact that our hotel was run most of the time by a chubby 12 year old who spent most of his time on Facebook.

From Rethymno we headed to Chania, and gosh, if we thought it couldn’t get any cuter, we might have been wrong. Chania had a different, yet adorable harbor, with a pretty little lighthouse, little streets and back alleys . Just a really fun place to take a wander. We spent a whole morning hanging out down by the harbor, walking out to the lighthouse, enjoying the view. And the food was delicious. And if you are at a cool place and you order a reasonable amount of food, you get dessert (either fruit or a little grain pudding thingy) and sometimes… RAKI. Which is disgusting. But free. And a fun little boost after your 3 euro half liter of house wine 

From Chania we decided to head to Paleochora as our home base for some outdoorsy Rosh Hashanah time. For the uninitiated Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, and for Mike and I If we are not near a congregation we feel at home, nature will do just fine. Ironically, Chania does have a beautiful little historic synagogue, and apparently they now have a congregation of 5 (more with tourists and visitors), and we were invited, but honestly, I feel more religious in nature than I do with 10 Orthodox men…

So, into nature. Paleochora itself was little and nice. It is on a peninsula between the Mediterranean sea and the Libyan sea. We found a cute little pension on the Libyan side (which was a little less resort-y and more homey) run by a kajillion-year-old woman I like to call Mama. She sat in a chair at the bottom of the stairs and said, Kalimera (good morning) in the morning, Kalispera (good evening) in the evening, and Yasas (hello) if we were coming and going too often.

The next morning we started off crazy pants early (that’s bus at 6:30) to get to the Samaria Gorge around 8. The Samaria Gorge is the largest in Europe, and it’s super purdy. It was a 13 km hike (but when you finish… it’s another 3 km to where you get the boat back… we walked one and took a van 2, but I get ahead of myself). It’s not an easy hike (as the sign insinuated at the beginning which I thought said no old people… which I think did say, no old people with canes), a lot of it is a pretty extreme downhill, much of it down rocks, through rock creek beds or over slippery worn down stones. Not gonna lie, my knees and calves were sore for a while. It is funny when you hike on similar paces as other people you notice things; we came to know people as the “don’t ask them to take your picture it will come out bad” people, “the obnoxiously slow picture taker hikers”, “the angry lady and her non-angry friends” and “the crazy family with a lot of hiking poles”. In the gorge is a special kind of goat only found there called the Kri-Kri. I made a lot of jokes about trying to catch one to make a shofar, but honestly their horns were a smidge puny. They are apparently elusive… you know where we saw two? At the rest stop in the middle where everyone eats lunch. Ba dum bum (that’s the sound of a rim shot)! We finished the hike with time to spare (there is a boat back, but only one a day at 5:30, we finished the hike around 2:30) so we luxuriated over some beers at the port.

Note: one of our special skills that we have acquired while travelling is how to make 1 round of drinks (and occasionally a snack) justify our sitting at a café for somewhere between 1-3 hours. If your café has a spectacular view or free wi-fi, we’re up around the 3 hour mark. But I think we make lovely window dressing and attract more customers, so it’s not all bad.

Our last real day in Paleochora we headed to Elefonissi, the Pink Beach! It is a beach where (I’m sure you could look it up but I’d rather wildly guess..) there is a bit of pink sand right at the shore, I think it is….. crushed shells? Dunno, but there are a lot of shells there. Anyway, from where we were you could take a boat there (yes you can also drive but that is so much less fun). It was probably the most crowded beach we have been on (although I’m sure less bad than true high season), but it was still a gorgeous day and the water was fabulous, and crazy shallow, it’s the kind you can wade out forever, well, there were amusingly deep spots, but mostly shallow.

We spent our last day in Crete wasting time, it was great. Morning at a café with free wi-fi, then back to Chania where we got one more delicious Cretan dinner and it was on to the overnight ferry. Oh, overnight ferry. A) We have come to the decision that ferries in Greece are meh. Some are great, some are terrible, not really easy to tell what you’re gonna get. B) Some places (like Chania) there is nowhere to wait. We were literally dropped off on the jetty, an hour early, and I had to pee. C) People love to get ready to get on the boat like a half hour early and start lining up (on an unseated overnight ferry, good spots are key), but ferries take like 8 years to dock and unload. D) This ferry was insane, when they dropped the chain people ran and pushed. Thankfully, we are great runners and pushers, and ended up with some great seats. Unfortunately, the ferry proceeded to shake/rumble for the entire 8 hour journey, it’s like we sat on one of those beds where you pay a quarter to make it shake… and it got stuck. That’s ok, Mike watched a Demi Moore movie that we didn’t know existed, nothing like travelling to help you catch up on flops that you missed in the US of A.

We’re back in Athens, heading to Meteora for a quick jaunt tomorrow, then back the next evening for a very early flight to ITALY! Less than 30 days till US landfall. Crazy.