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The vacation is almost over. Tomorrow morning we will drive back up to the north coast, turn in our rental car, and catch a flight to Prague, via Munich. We have seen most of the things we planned to see, done most of the things we planned to do, and eaten everything we wanted to eat plus discovering a couple of new things. So, today was sort of a winding down day.
We had breakfast at the restaurant down the hill, which was not particularly good value for money but it was a bit comical. The owner greeted us, wiped down the table and then disappeared. For about 10 minutes, and we were the only customers in the place. It was weird, and we were starting to wonder if we should leave, when a young girl, with a baby, pulled up on a moped. She explained that the guy didn’t speak English, so he’d called her.
After breakfast, a dip in the pool, and a morning of not doing much at all, we drove to two beaches we’d heard about. Lagoons, really. It was sea water, but calm, and the second one in particular (the White Lake) was surrounded by spectacular rock formations. Then, we went for lunch, and I finally got to order some taramosalata which, unsurprisingly, nobody else in the family liked.
After that, we stopped at a mini-market to get some stuff for spaghetti at home for our last dinner, and some road snacks for tomorrow, and then took a walk to a monastery which wasn’t far off.
Home again, we had spaghetti for dinner as, once again, we watched the sun set into the western sea. After that, Helena and I walked back downhill to catch a last look at the rocky coast before darkness set in, and that’s where the funniest thing of the day happened.
“Is that a cat?” she said, and sure enough it was, one small cat, sitting amidst the rocks and the salt water pools between the rocks, the kind of environment where ships wreck, pirates fear to tread, and people should not go without proper footwear and even then, carefully.
“I do believe it is,” I said.
“Do you think he knows he to get back?” she said.
“I’m sure,” I said, but I wasn’t sure at all.
“I’m going to take a picture,” she said.
She pointed her phone in the rough direction of the cat and it took off like a shot, two or three steps to shore, skipping stone to stone as sure footed as could be, a couple more steps up the beach, running like the wind, up to the road, around the corner and completely out of sight, all in about two, maybe three seconds, tops.
Don’t worry about the cats. They know how to get out of whatever spot they’re in.

What a day. The drive here was kind of nerve wracking, twisty mountain roads at points narrowing to one lane, but with traffic in both directions. Beautiful, but scary. We went through a tunnel, for instance, which was pretty much exactly the width of a car, and had a traffic light at either side to let the traffic move through.
We’re staying in a town called Livadia, and I’m not sure you could even call it a town. There are two restaurants, one which specializes in breakfasts, and we’ll probably try that tomorrow, and the place where we ate today, which seemed like it was in somebody’s back garden, and probably was. I’m pretty sure that the family sitting at the long table were the owner’s family. They were there when we got there, there when we left, and seemed at home. The only other people there were two old Greek gents, who seemed to be just having drinks, and knew everybody. There are seven or eight places similar to the one we’re in, “Sunset Apartments,”scattered up and down the hillside, and maybe the same number of private residences, which look a lot more run down.
We have a pool, a spectacular view of the ocean, which we are close enough to hear, and we’re very, very happy with our accommodations. We watched the sun setting into the ocean from our balcony, and it was spectacular.
But…one of the reasons we chose this place was it’s proximity to the Pink Sand Beach at Elafonisi, which we thought was a must see. It’s basically a lie. Sure, there’s something a little bit pinkish to the sand right along the water’s edge (it’s ground up shellfish), in the right light, with a bit of imagination and preconceived notions, but as soon as it washes up onto the beach and the water runs out again, it’s the same color as sand everywhere. It wasn’t a bad beach, quite sandy, very shallow water, nice for little kids, but horribly commercialized with so many deck chairs it was hard to find a place to put down a towel, and it’s the first time in Crete I’ve seen a pay toilet anywhere.
So, if you’re going to Elafonisi, and expecting to see an actual beach made up of pink sand, forget about it. It’s a lie.

Yesterday was a road to the lovely south coast town of Ierapetra, and I have no trouble recommending it to anyone visiting Crete. It’s a bit out of the way, which may be why it seemed so devoid of tourists. The market street was essentially empty and even on the beach and in the sea, most of the people seemed to be Greek. All the kitschy souvenir shops were there, and lots of restaurants, but they were largely empty. The water was calm, and lovely, and very clear.
There weren’t a lot of tourist sites. We walked to the end of the beach to see the old fort, which was basically a wall that was having some work done on it, and then we saw a sign pointing to ‘Napoleon’s House.’ Well, that sounded worth seeing. There was a lady sitting at a desk near the front door and I didn’t want to pay so I said let’s go, but Helena asked how much it cost and it was free so I felt a bit foolish but we went in anyway. It would have been absurd for them to charge, but I’m kind of surprised they even had an attendant on duty. One plain room downstairs, with a sign explaining the history, in English and in Greek. One room upstairs, just a wooden floor, no furniture at all.
The story is that the French fleet, on their way to Egypt and lost in the fog, stopped for fresh drinking water, and one man stayed ashore and was given a tour of the island and dinner in a local’s home and stayed the night. He had a boat meet him in the wee hours of the morning and was gone by daylight but left a note, in French, saying ‘If anyone asks who the foreigner was, I am Napoleon Bonaparte.’
Then we went for lunch and, as usual, it was an absolutely huge amount of food. I even gave a couple of pieces of Souvlaki to the little begging dog who, I’m assuming, belonged to the owners, because he was clearly not a stray. The zucchini fritters we ordered as an appetizer were great and the sampler plate, which we had not ordered, was pretty great, too. That happens fairly often here, that they bring out something extra, for no reason at all.
On the way to Ierapetra we had passed an archaelogical site but by the time we saw it we had zipped by the entrance, so we stopped on the way back but the entrance was closed. So, we spent the evening exploring Minoan civilization on Wikipedia. Who says travel doesn’t broaden the mind?
Today is another road trip because we are once more changing locations, to a place in the southwest called Livadi, where apparently they have a beach with pink sand. I’m looking forward to seeing that.

Yesterday, we went to Crete Aquarium because we’d heard it’s nice and it was. I got a senior discount, Isabel still qualifies for the children’s discount, and Sam got a student discount, so Helena was the only one who paid full whack and it was, therefore, quite affordable. It was cool, lots of different fish, some sea turtles, lobsters, crabs, ,jellyfish, rays and the weirdest looking of all, morays. One thing I liked was there were plenty of nice, wooden benches to sit and relax and contemplate the big tanks, sort of a meditative experience, as you watched the parade of screaming kids walk by, which doesn’t bother me too much as places like this are primarily meant for people like them.
After that, we went to the beach which was right in front of the parking lot and it was kind of amazing in that it was a completely natural beach – there were no deck chairs and umbrellas, no change rooms, showers and toilets, no nothing other than sea and land, and very few people. It was very nice.
Then we drove back to our place, showered, changed and took a bus into Heraklion. We were quite surprised to see that people were still wearing masks on public transport. Not everybody, but enough that we kind of felt out of place and got some for the way back.
We’re now having sort of an interim morning, Helena has done some laundry, we spent a bit of time at the beach this morning and then just by the pool, and we’re planning on going back into Heraklion for a museum or two this afternoon, and probably a meal.
It’s a lovely place, and of course it’s touristy, but less so than Chania, I think.

I have a tremendous internal struggle, a conflict between two essential parts of my nature that plays out every time I sit down at a restaurant, which happens at least once a day when we’re on vacation and sometimes more, and is brought into even sharper focus now that we’re on vacation in Greece where the food is just so damned good, and that is the conflict between my desire to lose weight, which is actually kind of important and even a health issue, and not just vanity, although lord knows (figure of speech) I’, m not exactly lacking in the vanity department either, and my desire to get my money’s worth.
The kids wanted pizza tonight, they’ve been complaining about having souvlaki all the time, which is silly because they’ve had other choices, but they didn’t bitch about having to walk around the ruins of the palace of Knossos today (which I’m glad we saw, but I was a bit disappointed – the massive numbers of people there, looking very much a part of the 21st century, kind of made it impossible to FEEL the antiquity of the place and, in the end, it just seemed like a bunch of old rocks) so I figured it was their turn to call the restaurant, and they wanted pizza.
Anyway, the price was great, we considered just getting one large pizza for the four of us and that might have even been enough, but pizza is deceptive and what looks like a lot can be gone very quickly, so we ordered a large seafood and a medium pepperoni, and it was more than enough. We had to ask for the rest to go, and hadn’t done that yet this trip, and didn’t know if that was an acceptable thing to do in Greece, but it turns out they were fine with it, although I’m still thinking it’s not commonly done because the box was more like a chocolate box and we had to stack the pieces one on top of the other to make it fit.
Well, we were ready to go but then they came around with the complimentary dessert – loukoumades, which are balls of deep fried dough, glazed with honey, and there was a whole stack of them, surrounding a mound of ice cream in the middle. It was exquisite. They also brought out a carafe of some liqueur they called raki, which was wasted on us because I don’t drink, swore it off over 20 years ago, did AA meetings and have been living sober one day at a time ever since, and Helena has never drank much, she might have a glass of wine if she’s forced to at a business function, but more than 2 glasses and she is a bit ill, Isabel is too young and Sam, while we allowed him to sample it, was out with his parents and not with his friends, so not exactly the greatest moment to get hammered.
But we sure did plow through the loukoumades and now, 3 hours later, I’m still feeling a bit stuffed.
Sure got my money’s worth, though.