Anita and I are traveling through Greece and in this post continue on with our G Adventures group doing the “Best of Greece” tour. The previous post can be found here: More of Greece. Kalambaka, Meteora and Monasteries, Delphi and Napflio

Sunday, September 4, 2022
We boarded the ferry an hour before departure, settled into our rooms and met on the upper deck where there’s a really nice bar. Our room on the ferry was comfortable and the hum of the engines together with the motion of the boat made me sleep like a baby. My alarm woke us up at 5.40 am. We met the group at reception and were some of the first disembark. After a 20 minute bus ride to Chania, we dumped the bags, walked around town and finished a massive breakfast at Remezzo by 8.30 am. That left a full day to spend exploring Chania

Bye bye Athens. The room on the ferry was much more comfortable than I expected!

5 Sep 2022

The Nea Chora beach is within easy walking distance of town so we decided to check it out. It’s one of the nicest beaches we’ve seen and is actually sandy. It’s a great beach for walking too as it’s huge. We walked till we reached an area with some hotel lounge chairs then plopped ourselves in empty ones expecting to get kicked out. We lucked out. Maybe it wasn’t busy? So we swam in the bath warm sea and read in the shade for a couple hours before walking back to the Nefeli hotel where we checked in, cleaned up and went back to town for the sunset.
We chose a restaurant we could see the sunset from. The gyro meal was delicious but the sunset was “meh” The place had exploded with people so we enjoyed people watching for a while before doing a bit more wandering around the unique, interesting and very scenic town. Of course there was a gelato shop and this one had goat cheese and pear gelato. That was yummy!

Monday. Apparently it’s the last of our good breakfasts as Cretans (yes, that’s what they call themselves) aren’t morning people. They like to serve raki after every meal, even BREAKFAST. Once we were even given some after buying some lotion in a shop. There she had us trying pomegranate flavoured and some coffee flavoured raki. She wanted to give us more but we managed to escape.
In Crete they also like to shoot holes in road signs. Interesting. We saw much evidence of that.
Our driver took us carefully across the mountains through hairpin turns past amazing scenery, cliff hanging sheep and goats just chilling on the road to the ferry port bound for Agia roumeli
Tuesday
We opted not to hike the gorge as we only had the afternoon and it’s soooo hot. It would have been nice to start it first thing in the morning but that’s not an option with a one night stay. Those who did it said it was nice but there were a LOT of people so we’re glad we spent the day on the beach instead. 5 euro each for a chair and a free drink was a bargain. Swim, read for a bit and swim some more in the beautiful Mediterranean Sea was a perfect use of time. For dinner the Cretan salad was delicious

Tuesday had a leisurely start. Breakfast wasn’t till 8.30 and simply fresh orange juice, toast and honey or marmalade. After a nice walk we boarded the ferry to loutro. Too early for check, in we donned swimsuits and headed off. The others went for lunch but we decided ice cream was in order. Then we walked to Finikas bay (about 2km) where we spent another afternoon in and out of the water. We walked back a shorter way over the ridge. It was more like a hike and we were even escorted by goats. The old fortress on top was interesting.
Dinner was at a restaurant we’d walked by where we’d seen a man bbqing all day. The pork on a spit was amazing. The portion of greens is apparently often just picked in the wild. It tasted kind of like spinach but better. The whole meal was delicious. Well. Other than the obligatory finish of raki. We didn’t finish that.

Wednesday. Pavlo picked us up in his boat with his dog Shakira and took us to Likos bay where he spent a couple hours teaching us to make moussaka. While it was baking we walked the beach and did some swimming. He served us a delicious salad and the moussaka. Twas good but making it is a LOT of work. Rather than have him boat us back we elected to walk back. Took about an hour and by then we were hot so went to the far end of Loutro for a swim. After cleaning up we went back to town and watched the sun go down while enjoying a cocktail.

Thursday. A ferry to Skalja where Dmitris picked us up in the bus. He drove up and down the mountains to drop us off in Heraklion. There we visited Knossos. These ruins date back to 2000 years before Christ. It was destroyed by earthquakes and fire started in the stored olive oil. There is still evidence of that fire. Some of the pottery is original and intact as well as a few paintings. They even had a sort of flush toilet back then. Amazing! After taking the bus back to the city we wandered till we found a place that looked like it had good food and filled up on veggies. That is not difficult in Greece. Every menu has an assortment of delicious salads.

The next day we boarded a sea jet ferry bound for Santorini. I’ve heard mixed reviews on this famous tourist destination. We’ll have to see!!