Crete in a few days
Trip Start
May 14, 2011
1
11
16
Trip End
Jul 12, 2011
Crete, Crete, Greece
Monday, May 30, 2011
Hotel Gorgia (not that hard to find in the day light) is nice, the people who run the place are all family and the rooms are comfortable. Again this one has free WI-Fi access, but don't ask the old man about it, 'cause he will mumble something Greek and hand you a list of passwords as long as your arm.
Just 50 mtrs down the road, towards the water, you will find a small and clean family run restaurant called Mama Katepina and Tabepna (tavern). This place is great. The service is warm and friendly, the food is awesome and really cheap. And to think we just stumbled upon this place in the dark. We looked over the menu and the young lady serving handed us a form. This form had the menu choices in English with a tick box and then next to that the dish in greek. This was so the choice did not have to be translated in the kitchen. Great Idea!!! We ordered about seven dishes and drinks. Once we had finished eating, placed on our table was a platter of fresh fruits and a bottle of the house Raki, on the house. When we got the bill, we thought that they had left something off, because it totalled only about 20 Euros. On paying the bill I handed the lady another 10 Euros as a tip, for such excellent service and awesome food must deserve something. Breakfast at the hotel was a continental buffet free for all, so get in first or the pickings a slim. The woman in the kitchen does replenish the buffet, but takes her time about it.
Once checked out we threw our bags into our little car and headed off to the ruins of the Ancient palace of Knossos. This is amazing and can’t be missed, you just have to put up with the million tourists that pile off about 400 thousand buses. If you stay away from the crowds and move in the opposite direction, you will get to see everything, but with minimal fuss and barging through crowds. Pay attention to the details in the building work of this place. Some of the giant blocks would weight tonnes and are cut from a crystal sort of quartz like stone. It would have been seriously beautiful in it hey day.
Then it was back in the car and off into the countryside to our next destination. A little farming village called Zaros. Here we had booked a little bed and breakfast named Keramos. Now driving from town to town sounds easy enough, but. In Greece nothing is very well sign posted and the sign posts there are, are illegible or over grown by trees and easily missed. You will go astray from your chosen route, I promise you. And although most of the main roads are in better condition of any at home, once you enter a town, the road will narrow to not much more than the width of your car. And the cars are small. So some care is to be taken navigating around some of the tricky and tight turns, if you come across another car, tractor, truck, scooter or even a giant tour bus squeezing through in the opposite direction, it can be dangerous and a bit of a fright. And the suicidal drivers are in the country aswell, you can be cruising along at the speed limit with traffic coming toward you, and some knob will overtake you, turning two lanes into three. So we reached our B and B in one piece and need of a tea break. It just so happens that as soon as we walked in the door, we were treated to a pot of herbal tea, made from herbs and flowers freshly picked from the mountain. It was delicious and refreshing. This place also has free WI-FI, but only really down stairs in the public areas, because of the thick stone walls of the several hundred year old building. There a few of good mountain hikes around Zaros, ranging from 15 mins to 5 hours, there is not much in the way of shops in Zaros, so stock up before you head out for these. Now when it comes around to time for your evening meal, the lady will recommend a vegetarian and vegan restaurant just around the corner (that her mother works in funny enough) they have a set menu that changes daily, so you just sit and your vegie delights come out to you. Now we can’t recall the name of this place, probably because it was the worst dining experience of our lives. Firstly, you sit directly opposite the local watering hole where all the local old guys hang out and stare at you like you are an exhibit in a zoo. Second, you are perched right on the edge of a narrow and very busy road, which just made me nervous. And third, every dish that came out to us contained unrecognizable meat of some sort, seemed to be a few days old and was zapped in the microwave. Not good. We ate what we could, paid the bill and left before they could offer us anything else.
Breakfast at Keramos is advertised as the best breakfast on Crete. And I think it would be the best we had in our few days. 14 different, freshly baked pies, straight out of the oven and onto your table. A good variety of meat, vegetarian and sweet pies accompanied by good hot fresh coffee and a range of teas, including more of that fresh mountain herbal tea. This will take you a little while to get through, but you have to try them all, the cost is included in the 45 Euros for the room and it will keep you full until late afternoon. Whatever you don’t eat, they will bag up for you to take out for your days excursions….. Awesome….so this place is well worth a look as a base for some excellent day walks.....more to follow
