Adventures Through Crete

During my travels through Greece my family spent a week in Crete. We flew from Thessaloniki to Heraklion and rented a car to take a mini road trip around Crete. First we went to Chania where we had our first bad experience with directions, but we made it to our awesome little house. We got to our house and the nice people we were renting from were waiting there, with freshly baked bread, little savory pies, and oranges from their orange trees (which we made fresh orange juice out of) - it was all delicious.

Fresh squeezed OJ in Chania

We stayed in Chania for four nights, and three fun days. We walked around old town Chania and the nearby beach. One day we went to the beach Elafonisi. It took a while to get there but when we did it was really fun. My brother and I swam for awhile in the shallow water, then went on a walk. Sadly we found some trash on the beach (which seems to be true at most any place in the world) but I made use of a couple of things while I went scavenging. I found some pretty nice stuff but my family didn't agree and made me throw it away, but only after getting some pics.

Port in Old Town Chania

Elafonisi Beach

Handy chair and shoe scavenged at Elafonisi

When we left Chania we went to a small ocean side town on the south coast called Plakias. We had rented a small apartment on the side of one of the many huge hills with a really nice view of the ocean and stayed there for two nights. The first time we went out we went to a monastery that was very important in WWII because the monks helped take care of the soldiers and locals until they could evacuate to Egypt. The monastery was closed but there was a really nice beach close by with a palm forest where we took a walk on and then had a picnic. Later that day when we had gotten home we walked down to town through some olive tree groves. It turned out to be a lot harder than we had expected because there was a big ravine that I jumped over but everyone else slid down and climbed to the other side. After we had found a trail again we ran into a fence with a trench on the other side but it wasn't to hard too find a way around. Soon we saw a road, but there was still a lot of trees and tall wet grass between us. There ended up being a trail that neither my brother or I saw until after I had jumped off the side of a hill and rolled getting soaked and scratched from brambles. We finally got to the store we had gone SO FAR to get to and got some food, then walked up, but on the road this time.

View from our apartment

Palm tree foresst

When our days were done in Plakias we made our way towards Agios Nikolaos. On the way there we stopped at the Palace of Phaestos. We walked around there for a bit, took a couple pictures, pet some cats and then were on the road again. Our apartment in Agios Nikolaos was really close to a beach, but sadly we never went swimming since it was kind of rainy. There was also a trail into town that we had to walk on because of… not pointing any fingers… my mom. When we got to town we went and got some tasty treats and food for dinner then looked around the town for a while, again because of someone, then walked home in the dark. The next day it was raining, so we went to town in our car and found a café by a lake in the middle of the city and did some homework. When our homework was completed we walked on a path along the side of the sea. After our walk we went to dinner and got some delicious food. The next day we prepared for our last destination, Heraklion.

Phaestos kitties

Lake next to our "homework cafe"

This drive was the longest, which I’m happy about because it wasn’t very long. During the drive we went to the Dikteon Cave where Zeus was born. It was a lot different than I had expected it to be, a small cave with a bunch of goats, because it was huge, and there were no goats. Thankfully there where a lot of lights since it would be really dark without them. There were stairs that you had to walk down with tons of big rocks covered with moss everywhere, this made us wonder how people got down here such a long time ago. At the bottom there was a small creek and there were tons of stalactites and stalagmites covering the walls. We tried to take a picture with our little Herakles action figure, but it was really hard since, even with lights, it was kind of dark. After we left the cave we continued our car ride.

Heracles in the birth place of his father

We stayed in Heraklion for only one night because we had to take a ferry to Santorini the next day. My brother and I really wanted to get some pizza for dinner, and my parents agreed. We found a small pizza place, and it was delicious. The next day we took a bus to the Palace of Knossos. The Palace of Knossos was an ancient Minoan site that was bought by a rich English man in the late 1800’s. After they excavated it they started to rebuild parts of it the way he thought it would look, it doesn’t look very good today and archaeologists are pretty mad about the restorations. They only rebuilt parts of the palace and used horrible colors to paint it. When we left the old/new ruins we, my mom, decided to walk all the way back to our apartment, which was actually a pretty long walk. The road didn’t have a very big shoulder, and people drive on the shoulder anyway, so we looked for a trail. We found one but there was tons of wet grass so we got soaked up to our knees. Our trail led back to the city, and on the way we stopped at a big bakery and got some good desserts. That night we got on the ferry to Santorini and said good bye to Crete.

Desserts on our long walk home

Leaving Crete