We are into our last week on Crete and the weather had definitely changed. Mornings are warm and the days just keep getting warmer. Sea breezes keep it tolerable, but when I walk in the mornings, between 8 and 9 usually, I come back completely drenched. Fortunately, there is pool to dive into and so quickly all is right with the world.
Sunday, Polley and I took our second field trip. We headed out east again, but as we reach the sea at Agio Nikolaos we turned north for the towns of Elounda and Plaka. From the guide book, Elounda is the most expensive resort town in Crete.
You actually wouldn’t know that without reading about it. It is lovely, but there are endless lovely beach towns in Crete. We continued to climb and were able to look back toward Elounda
However, with the warning about its being expensive, needless to say, we drove straight through and continued north to Plaka, a much smaller village that is about 10 miles or so further north. The notoriety for Plaka is that it was for much of the first half of the 20th century, directly across from Spinalonga, the leper colony for the Greeks.
Actually, I am reading a novel about Spinalonga that our hostess, Angela, gave me. Spinalonga began as a Venetian fortification and was eventually in the hands of the Turks. In the early 20th century the Greeks established the leper colony there and it operated until 1957, by which time they had found a cure for leprosy.
While you can take boat trips out to Spinalonga, we opted for sitting at a lovely little taverna directly across from the island. There is really nothing there but the crumbling buildings from a bygone era. It was also a very hot afternoon and the island is completely exposed. Over our glass of wine and some lunch, we watched the small tour boats come and go from the pier
to the island.
It truly is a lovely setting. Unfortunately, it was a disappointing lunch. Obviously, it was tourist fare and had little flavor. As I told Polley, when you have to salt your feta, there is definitely something wrong. We did enjoy sitting there, however, and when a French couple behind us ordered lobster (at 85 euro a kilo), we watched the fellow and a kitchen girl go down to the sea and pull two out to bring up and grill.
Following a forgettable lunch (when in Plaka, avoid Delphini’s), we decided to head still further north and go nearly to the end of the road and return via some old roads that offered some great views of the coast. We headed up the hills out of Plaka, looking back on the desolate island (except for tourists) of Spinalonga.
We passed through tiny little village, if you are able to call them that. It felt very much like trips we had taken to the very north of Scotland where for miles and miles you are the only car on the road. At some point, we were not the only car on the road as a pickup truck, no doubt driven by a Crazy Creten, came flying around a corner and for the first time in many years, I truly thought that Polley and I could experience our demise on a desolate Cretan road. At the last second, the driver got the truck under control and flew past us. Our mortality seemed to be a constant back seat passenger for the remainder of the journey.
We got home quite tired. The constant hairpin turns and shifting gears is exhausting. Siesta time!. We then went down to our internet bar and just relaxed by the harbor for about an hour and a half. An idyllic evening with just the hint of moving air. Then it was home for dinner in as we had a refrigerator full of restaurant leftovers. It will be a quiet day tomorrow where we will just be thankful there will be a tomorrow.
As predicted, Tuesday was quiet. It started very quiet for when we awoke we had no electricity. That actually went on for 8 hours! So it was coffee from very warm tap water. We enjoyed the pool in morning as there was little other choice. Our apartment has an electric gate so we were not able to really even leave the compound until Stuart hand-cranked the gate around 11 in the morning. Polley and I went into town for a glass of wine about noon and tried a new little place called The Cactus Pub. This took us back to a bar in Toulouse called Le Cactu which was about the only place near us then that you could get a drink on a Sunday. It was a nice little spot right on the harbor and was run by a Scots woman from Edinburgh. The rest of the day was the usual: lunch, siesta, pool. We went in to Sisi for our ouzo fix around 6:30. Also caught up on e-mails before going to dinner. We returned to Neromilos, the little taverna that we enjoyed the first night. It has a lovely garden setting and the husband and wife that run it re very nice; and the food is very good. We had a little tzatziki (we always try each place in terms of that starter), and then had Stifado which is a beef stew in a tomato sauce made with plenty of onions, wine and a bit of cumin. It was to die for! Then is was home for us to die. Not a hard day, but the day after travel is always tough. This may call for two days off before our next excursion.
Ed and Polley
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