The previous evening I scoured Booking.com, Air BnB, and Trip Advisor to find the “perfect” place to stay. Right price, right location, not too spartan . . . it’s a tough job when you aren’t a decisive decision maker. I finally settled on a group of apartments near the beach instead of downtown by the harbor. Since I had reserved a rental car, we could easily drive into Old Town, but I figured the kids would rather go to the beach.
Our car for 2 weeks. A diesel (didn’t know how essential this would be until later) Volkswagon with room for 7.
We arrived at the apartments and found that I had chosen wisely. The best way to describe the compound is a Greek Melrose Place. Several individual 2 story buildings that all face a pool in the middle. The grounds are covered with olive and pomegranate trees with small patches of grass that run in-between the buildings. And several resident cats that the kids made friends with, naming the mama, Moon, and the baby, Night. There was a huge big daddy black cat that roamed the property as well and would stalk around under our table after dinner, hoping to catch any leftover scraps.
The olives were ripening all over the country. I never realized that olives vary in varieties that are as small as capers to large fruit that are bigger than my thumb.
Mmm, pomegranates growing right outside our back door. I realized after we left that I never took photos of our beautiful villa. I booked a 2-bedroom, but upon arrival the owner upgraded us to a 3 bedroom, two story villa that felt like a cabin inside, with an interior balcony that overlooked the living room below.
After we moved our luggage into our home for the next 4 nights, we decided to hit the beach. It was overcast, but still warm enough for shorts and t-shirts (except for me).
We had goats as neighbors — the boys would bleat at the goats and the goats would talk back as we walked to and from the beach.
Less than 10 minutes past the goats and through the neighborhood and we were at “our” beach.
The Mediterranean Sea is a bit cooler than the Arabian Gulf.
But still warm enough to swim
ready to scope out some fish
I relaxed on the sand (in my sweatshirt) while Camille played on shore and the boys went swimming with Josh.
A bit cold, we decided to walk home, warm up, and find dinner.
Something unique about Crete’s bathrooms. Every place we went had a hand-held shower that was installed waist high (no way to hang it on the wall to stand under it). This place was high class in that it actually had a stall, unlike another place where the shower was just a corner of the (very small) bathroom. It turns out it’s not unusual there. The boys made me laugh because they thought the shower was actually a tiny bathtub so they filled it up and had a soak.
Meanwhile Josh and I sat on our bedroom balcony and basked in the knowledge that we had almost 2 weeks of this ahead of us.
For dinner we asked the owner of our apartment where we should go to eat and she drew us a map so we could find a restaurant called The Well of the Turk in a back alley downtown. “Not touristic. Very good.” She said if we went early, “7 or 8pm”(!?!?) we would be able to get a table without a reservation. No problem there, I was starving at 5:30.
Old Town is beautiful and quaint.
We wound our way through narrow alleys and found this — no way for tourists to find it unless they stumbled upon it!
And she was right about the fabulous food — pasta with smoked salmon and dill, eggplant with meatballs, chicken kebab. . . and much more, but since I’m not writing this the day we ate dinner, it’s all been buried under a pile of subsequent vacation memories. We sat and ate and laughed for a few hours and the lady at the next table over asked where we were from: “New Zealand? Sweden? You can’t be from America, your children are too well behaved!” She must have missed Carter trying to eat his chicken kebab off the skewer like it was an ear of corn.
After dinner we strolled by Starbucks to see if they had mugs to add to our collection
A one stop shop for all of Greece and the Greek Islands!
Here’s where we made a mistake. They had so many mugs that we figured we’d purchase ours on the way back through Chania before flying home. No sense in carrying them around for 2 weeks in our luggage and risk them getting broken. When we returned, they were all out. Nada, zilch, nothing. Oh well. Now we have to come back next year to pick up our mugs!
harbor at night
And ice cream as a nightcap!