3 Days in Crete

                                                                                                                                                 3 Days in Crete

Have you ever been to Crete? If not, what do you think it is like, if you have what do you remember the most? Crete is a splendid island, located in the Aegean Sea. It is the biggest island out of all in the Aegean, with an area of eight thousand square kilometres. This place was chosen by my parent, as they own the money. They chose this place mostly because of the beach, and because we never were on an Island.

Day 1:

I flew to Crete at the end of August. The airport at Crete is small compared to its tourism popularity. I really did think that Crete would have a bigger airport, as most of the popular touristic places that I visited, had big airports.

Kazantzakis Airport, Heraklion, 27ºC
The picture shows the airport of Kazantzakis, one of the two airports in Crete. Located in Heraklion.

We stayed at Amoudara, a really popular place for tourists. It is filled with enough shops, bars and restaurants to satisfy most tastes, as it was said in the travel guide. It was, in fact, a popular place for tourists, mainly tourists were from Russian speaking countries, as there was a lot of bar and restaurant staff that spoke Russian. 

Amoudara was located far from the Airport, so we had to think about how we would get there. We thought that a bus would be a good option as it is really cheap. We asked the ticket sellers at the bus stop on how to get to Amoudara. Of course, there was a language barrier but they understood from the word Amoudara that we were, in fact, going to Amoudara. 

We didn’t stay at an expensive luxury hotel, because we knew that we would spend most of our time in the hotel, but rather outside. We went to a hostel that was a villa, named La Santre Villa. It was a villa owned a by a 52-year-old man who made it into a hostel. The man was really nice and helpful. He helped us out when we needed something. That something could vary from salt to towels for the beach. The hostel had 10 rooms and the rooms were not connected at all. So we got our own bathroom and kitchen.

The whole day we spent unpacking our clothes, and in the evening we went around the area, just walking, and thinking about what we could do the next day.

Day 2: 

I and my mom woke up and cooked ourselves some breakfast. We made basic scrambled eggs with tomatoes. We brought the eggs from Vienna as we knew we wouldn’t have the time nor know where to buy the eggs. After the breakfast, we went to the closest supermarket. It took us around 20 minutes to get to the supermarket on foot. We knew we would buy a lot of food, so we had an idea of emptying one of our luggage and putting the food in there. 

The food at the supermarket was expensive. They didn’t have many vegetables or fruits. This might have been due to the shipment of the goods. We had to buy foods such as cookies and bread, so they wouldn’t spoil fast.

After buying our food, we went to this place called “Ivan Susanin”. It was recommended by the owner of the Villa. “Ivan Susanin” is a tourism place, where you could buy a ticket to see sightseeing around the whole Crete. They had excursions for every day of the week. One of the excursions was the merge of the 3 seas. I really wanted to go there, but unfortunately, the excursion was every Tuesday and for my case Tuesday was today. My mom chose the “Cave of Zeus” excursions for the next day. The excursion would start in the early 7:40 am and it would be till 6 in the evening.

At around 2 pm we went to the beach. The beach was crowded but it was still charming. The owner recommended us to take food from the place called “Taverna”. He said that we would get a free beach bed and an umbrella with our food. We ate two ice creams, which gave us two beach beds and an umbrella. The whole day we spent at the beach, lying on the beach beds and getting a tan. The beach was relaxing and I easily fell asleep listening to the whooshing waves. 

Beach at Ammoudara, 3pm, 28ºC.
Beach at the Gulf of Heraklion. On the left side is the "Taverna"

After the relaxing nap at the beach, we went to the restaurant as promised to the staff. I ordered a grilled chicken breast, and my mom ordered a cooked fish fillet. They brought the food and it looked yummy. My eyes didn’t lie to me, when I got my first bite I fainted right on the spot. The chicken breast was so delicious that I kept saying wow every time. The cook really knew how to cook the food. My mom said that she never tasted any fish like that. 

We went back to our hostel after the best dinner ever. 

Day 3:

We woke up at 7 AM and got ready for our excursion. We took some cookies and went straight for our excursion. We travelled by an excursion bus to the cave of Zeus. On the way to the cave, we passed a lot of other sightseeing. One of the sightseeing was olive oil and pot making. Apparently, most of the profit in Crete comes from Oils. Every family owns at least 100 olive trees. We were given to try some olive oils with bread, and we could also make pottery that we took afterwards. 

The cave of Zeus in Crete, 14ºC.
The cave of zeus located in Heraklion. It was
around 14ºC. The cave is full with stalagmites
and stalactites. On the very bottom is a small

pond.

The most important part of the excursion was, of course, the cave of Zeus. We stopped at a mini bazaar, with a lot of tourists and buses. The cave was located on the top of the mountain. To get to the cave of Zeus we needed to walk for around 20 minutes. We also had an option to take a donkey, which would ride us to the top of the cave. We preferred to walk, and at the end, the hike wasn’t that hard. When we got to the top, it was filled with people. A lot of tourists were there, as all the tourist buses from all over Crete came at the similar time. The entry fee was 6 euros for both adults and children. After you pay the fee you walk around 100 metres to the cave. The cave was inside the mountain and it was freezing. The weather outside was 30ºC while inside the cave it was 14ºC. We had shirts and shorts so it was really cold inside for us. The cave was full with stalagmites and stalactites, that looked really gorgeous. 

We came back to the bus at 1:30, and went back to our hostel. On the way back, we stopped at a restaurant with the whole excursion group to get some lunch. I got myself a margarita, and my mom got bolognese. The food was ok, not as good as the food in “Taverna”. After the lunch, we as a group rode back to the hotels and hostels. Most of the people dropped halfway to our hostel. We were the last people that got out of the bus. We went back to our hostel at around 4 pm and got ready for our flight.

Our flight was at 8 pm. We packed our clothes and said our goodbye to the owner. He said that he could drive us to the airport. That was great news, otherwise, we would have taken the bus. He drove us to the Airport and wished us luck. We got on to our flight and flew back to Vienna. 

Overall, Crete is a really nice place to visit. Unfortunately, I had only 3 days in Crete, and that wasn’t enough. Even a whole week is not enough for Crete. If you ever visit Crete, I would recommend you to stay at “La Centre Villa” as the owner is nice and helpful, also it is really close to the beach.