Our one-bedroom apartment in Stalos has a full kitchen, dining area and living area with a balcony overlooking the swimming pool and the ocean. The owners, Dimitra and Manolis, left a decanter of home-made wine, home-made Raki and some greek pastries for us on the dining table - very welcoming. It's a quiet rural/seaside area, with small tavernas around, and sheep in the back field. However, it's quite a walk down (and up) the hill to the main road where we can catch the local bus into Chania, or Gerani. Plenty of exercise to burn off all those carbs! 
After unpacking we walked down the hill to catch the bus for a look around Chania, a very pretty old town built around a Venetian harbour. We were lucky to get a bus quite quickly, as we are right in the middle of the Greek Easter festival where everything slows down and the locals are on holiday. We did the tourist stroll around the front of the beautiful old Venetian Harbour, being accosted by touts trying to get us into their restaurants - I have to admit, some of them had very good lines, and we had some friendly interaction with them while 'running the gauntlet'. As we kept going, other restaurants boasted 'No pressing, no stressing', or 'We don't talk, we just have good food' - quite funny. We walked around past the Maritime Museum (which was closed) then found ourselves in a rabbit warren of narrow cobbled streets in the 'old town' - just lovely, and they had some beautiful little art shops, jewellery shops, local crafts etc, as well as numerous tavernas offering the same sort of fare as those on the front, but at cheaper prices.
We ended up eating at Xani's, a small restaurant run by an Australian woman and her Greek husband. Lovely food, and good conversation with the owners, as well as an Israeli couple sitting at the next table. That was really interesting - they'd flown over for just a few days as the flight is only 1.5hours from Israel. We talked about families, our countries, and then our flights, and how our layover was in Abu Dhabi - and they replied that they are not allowed to fly into there, indeed into any Arab state. This was something that had not occurred to me, as being Australian we have virtually no restrictions about countries we can visit. Quite sobering - again, I thought how lucky we are in Australia, when so many countries around the world are in the middle of wars, famines, and other atrocities - and how much we take for granted.
We had another wander through the old town, where I bought some lovely silver ear-rings in a Greek design, and a pendant to match. My first purchase - I'm pacing myself!
We met Diane, the local agent for our apartment rental in Crete, and she gave us lots of info on what to see and where to go - she organised a car for us for the two weeks at 240 Euros for a Fiat Punto - pretty reasonable. We went for our first drive on the wrong side of the road yesterday - that is, Trev drove. Quite interesting, we went up into the mountains as we thought it would be quieter - that's true, but they were very narrow, winding roads, so Trev got a good workout. And I was astonished to see these amazing snow-covered mountains in Crete - I really wasn't expecting it, and they are so beautiful. They're a wonderful backdrop to all the towns along the coast and the harbour.
We drove throught Platanias, Kolumbari then on to Ravdoucha, which Diane told us was a good snorkelling area. That was fun - for me anyway, not so much for Trev, as it really was a very winding, narrow mountain road - a bit like the 'Mama Mia Highway' on the Isle of Capri, Italy. We only got lost once and ended up on a bit of a goat-track (the Rangie would have loved it) so we asked a little old Cretan man standing next to a field where the beach was - no English at all, and our Greek certainly wasn't enough, so I mimed 'swimming' and he pointed us in the opposite direction. Yayy! We retraced our tracks and finally ended up at the bottom of these huge rocks, expecting it to be totally deserted - but no, there is always a taverna at the end of every road! And the beach was a very pebbly rocky one with a big swimming hole, so potentially it should be a good snorkelling area. We'll return another day with our gear and check it out. We had a coffee in the taverna, then headed back to our apartment, this time via the national highway. Time for a quiet night at home - eating out twice a day is getting rather expensive, not to mention very fattening!
1 comment:
China is one of my favorite places and i always love to be there. last time when i was on my South Australia Holidays , i decided to go for china next time.
This time china???
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