Crete, May 1998
From May 12-22nd we spent a holiday on Crete, one of the Greek islands, and I can tell you - we had a wonderful holiday. We left Amsterdam airport at 06.00 in the morning already and at about 1 o'clock in the afternoon we were in Koutouloufari already. That's a nice, small village, up in the mountains, 1 km. from Chersonissos, a big, very touristic town. Our apartment - Villa Dictyna - was nice, on the balcony we could see the sea, Chersonissos and we loked upon the pool, it was not such a big complex, just good and only Dutch people. There were many flowers everywhere, lots of bougainvilles (on our balcony also) geraniums (in bushes), oleanders and roses. People are very friendly there and there hardly is criminality. Next to us was a small supermarket and a bakery and everything which was put outside (fruits, the fridge with drinks, icecreams etc.) stayed there the whole night and everything still was there the next morning!! The first days it was cool while in Holland there was a heatwave!! But at the end I had a nice tan. We walked, made some trips, rented a car for one day, so we saw quite some, but Crete is a big island and we've seen only the eastern part. On Saturday I took the local bus to go to Iraklion - the capital - , Arie was not interested, so I went on my own, to the market and after that I took the bus to Knossos, a famous place. There has been a palace there which is partly reconstructed again. Crete - Kriti in the Greek language- has a rich history. Archeologists learn us that Crete is the gate through which the very ancient culture from the Middle East entered into Europe. The highlight was under the rule of the Minoan kings between 3000 and 1000 before Christ. Numerous and fascinating are the stories, the myths about Theseus, Ariadne, Zeus etc. All the big and wonderful Minoan palaces were destroyed by an eruption of the vulcano Santorini, almost 150 km. north Crete. This happened about 1500 before Christ and was the biggest vulcano eruption ever!! Later on Crete was occupied by the Romans, te Venetians and the Turkish and only in 1913 Crete became Greek, That was a little bit background of Crete!!!
Every evening we went out to different restaurants, eating in the open air, withh Greek musis, Greek dishes and one evening the best pizza I ever had (with tunafish). And sometimes we had lunch in a restaurant also (it was cheap there) or we just bought a pastry or so. We saw trees with lemons, oranges, abricots and figs, wild artichokes, olives (many), almonds etc.
One day we had a trip to Spinalonga (Italian for long nail/pin) and Elounda. On Spinalonga used to live leprous people and the two places became famous because of the British TV serie "who pays the ferryman". We had a wonderful guide on Spinalonga -Victor Zorbas- and he made the life those people lived there, very vivid for us. Another trip was to Santorini, the volcano-island and that was the highlight of this holiday. We went by boat, took us four hours to come there, so we left Iraklion at 07.45 already. On Santorini we had booked an excursion which brought us to three different places: Pyrgos, Ia and Thira. We liked Ia best, a charming village, built high upon a rock, white houses and the churches with blue roofs (the colour of the sky). The whole island is one lavamass- red, black and brown are the colours. Close to the island is the volcano, the last small eruption was in 1950 and in 1956 there was an earthquake. It is said that the legendary Atlantis is here!!! Deep down under the sea. We had to leave Santorini at 17.30, but we surely want to come back once.
The third trip was to a Cretan village - the daily life there - which was interesting also, we could enter the houses and see how people live there. And another day we rented a car and first drove to the Lassithi plateau - very nice with lots of flowers - then Agios Nilolaos, Ierapetra, Mirtos both on the southcoast and on the Libyan Sea. It was very stormy there, normally Ierapetra is the warmest place on Crete but not that day. Through the mountains (Crete is very mountainous, up to 2.5 km) we drove back to Koutouloufari. There are three villages next to another: Koutouloufári, Piskopianó and Old Chersonissos (traditional village) all three very nice villages, I can recommend them to you, many tourists of course, but not disturbing and mostly of our age. The young tourists and disco's are in the town Chersonissos near the sea. It was like a funny-fair there.
We left Crete on Friday/Saturday night and were back home at 05.00 Saturdaymorning. This was a wonderful holiday, our first time in Greece, but for sure not the last time.