Greetings from Crete
Well, I can confidently say that we have found another destination on our international adventure itinerary! This is without doubt a world class destination with a wide variety of options! Read the full story to give you a more in depth idea of what the trip is about. Also see the photo collection of our experience to wet your appetite.
Veiw the album from Crete at: http://picasaweb.google.com/ak4foot7/GreeceAndCreteMay2008
Andrew and I were due a good holiday. A couple of years ago we made contact with Rick Sweizer, the owner of North West Passage, and decided to swap trips. Rick and his family joined us on the Orange Gorge and we opted for an inn to inn sea kayaking holiday in Crete, the largest of the Greek Islands and more like a country on its own.
We flew SAA into London where we cunningly dropped off our two kids with my parents and flew on to Athens using Easyjet. We booked the flights quite far in advance and so got good fares but this was offset by the ‘cattletruck’ experience that is budget air travel. We arrived in Athens around 9pm and caught an easy metro connection to within 5 minutes walk of our accommodation. We had debated about whether to go the backpacker route – now that Greece uses Euros, the Rand doesn’t stretch as far as it used to – but in the end decided to splurge on a one bedroomed apartment on the edge of the ‘Plaka’ district. We sourced the apartment through www.villarentals.com and the service was good – simple and easy to use. The apartment had a nice little balcony (billed a ‘roof terrace’ on the website) with a view of the Acropolis, and was equipped with pretty much all one could need. We dumped our bags and headed off for some dinner. The Plaka district of Athens is the ‘old town’ of this typical Mediterranean city – meandering alleyways, lots of picturesque old building and a balmy climate. Of course, Athens is a tourist hotbed with endless curio shops and tavernas with genial hosts assuring you that theirs is the best dinner in the city. We opted for a takeaway souvlaki wrapped in a pita bread – cheap and tasty – and then headed for bed after a nightcap on the balcony. The next day was spent seeing the sights that Athens is famous for – as luck would have it, we were there on a Sunday, when admission to all of the museums and archaeological sites is free! Feeling like real tourists, we ticked off our list of Zeus’ Temple, Hadrian’s Arch, the Roman Agora and, of course, the Acropolis with the Parthenon and other temples. We respected the local tradition of a siesta after lunch before heading out again to enjoy an evening walking around the Acropolis and exploring the Monasteriki area. Although it’s easy to take all of these sights for granted – they are so accessible – you have to keep reminding yourself that they are unimaginably ancient, especially coming from a developing country such as ours where anything over 100 years old is deemed a National Monument!
