We landed in Crete and were driven by a really sweet taxi driver to the town of Chania. The town looks like a movie set/postcard. When we arrived in Chania, we got out of the taxi and onto a small golf cart to get down the narrow street to our hotel, Casa Delfino. We checked in with reception and went to the beautiful touristy area on the water for breakfast while our room was being cleaned.
We ate at Café Remezzo—the food was not good at all, but the view made up for it. I ordered an omelet which was basically one enormous deep fried egg with cheese on top. I decided not to eat it and went for bread and a salad instead.
After brunch we walked around the small town, which is like stepping back in time. The streets are cobblestone, and the people are ancient—not all of them, but a lot of them… the rest are tourists. Needless to say, people watching is unbelievable!
We walked about 10 minutes from our hotel and ended up at Nea Hora Beach with a lot of not so cute topless older people. Everyone was quite leathery and really strutting their stuff. I was very amused. We paid 5 Euros for two beach chairs and an umbrella set up, that came with fresh fruit and WIFI—all the necessities for a day at the beach!
After the beach we went back to the room. Daniel napped for what felt like 7 hours, and then we went up to the hotel rooftop for drinks before dinner. We went to dinner at the Pallas Bar Restaurant, which was on a beautiful rooftop overlooking the Old Venetian Harbor. Apparently the building was built in 1830. We ordered the deconstructed Greek salad, the Porcini mushroom risotto, and the grilled salmon pave with a green salad with fresh onions and sesame seeds. The food was delicious and the view was unbelievable. The service was not worthy of writing about. About an hour after we finished dinner we finally payed before wandering back to the hotel.
The next day we woke up and had breakfast in the hotel courtyard. The food was amazing—they served us basically ever dish they’ve ever decided to wrap in phyllo dough. Completely stuffed we decided to spend the day beach hopping so we got in the car and drove about thirty minutes east to Marathi Beach—it was unreal! The water was beautiful and clear, but definitely not warm… I’d describe it as refreshing. We rented two beach chairs and an umbrella and spent the morning there until we decided to walk to one of the local waterside restaurants (recommended by our hotel) for lunch. The restaurant was called Patrelantonis Fish Taverna, and it had to be one of my favorite meals of the trip. We ordered a panzanella greek salad and the salmon linguini and ate lunch on the water. I’d highly recommend going here.
We got back in the car and drove to Tersanas Beach, but somewhere away from the main area, because I’m pretty sure we were lost. We entered the beach through a small bar, had a beer and then laid out on the sand, which was more of a tiny pebble or rock beach. We swam for a bit and then decided to drive to Kou Kou Vaya, a little caffe (known for their desserts) with an excellent view of Chania. We grabbed coffees and checked the view before heading back to the hotel for showers, and sunset Aperol Spritzes on the rooftop.
That night we went to a Cretan restaurant called Portes for dinner. I was so tired I don’t remember exactly what we ordered because we were deliriously tired, but I’m positive it was delicious. This restaurant seemed to attract more of the island’s street cats than normal, and we ended up with one sitting under our table the entire meal and one sitting on our spare chair (on top of Daniel’s jacket).
Friday morning I woke up super early and decided to go up to the rooftop to watch the sun rise. It was about as scenic as a sun rise gets! Then I walked down to the room woke Daniel up and we went down to the courtyard for breakfast. I ordered a hard boiled egg but I’m pretty sure they just accidentally put a fresh egg in the egg dish because when I cracked it a raw egg exploded on the table. That was cute.
Considering our early start time, we decided to take advantage of the day and drive for an hour and thirty minutes to Elafonisi Beach. The drive was on a tiny, narrow, and at times one-lane road that hugged the edge of various cliffs. Semi-frightening, but also quite stunning. During the time we weren’t driving on the edges of cliffs we went through olive tree orchards. Around ten in the morning we arrived at Elafonisi Beach—one of the most stunning beaches on the planet, turquoise clear water, white sand, huge rock structures and mountain views. On our way in we purchased two water floats, a dolphin and a sting ray—very important.
It was clearly a popular destination for locals and tourists because about two hours after we arrived the beach was full—of large men in tiny speedos, selfie sticks, and people taking modeling photos. We felt like we were back on Ko Phangan island in Thailand where the Israelis at our hotel created the Israeli Modeling Competition. People Safari was amazing. We got lunch at one of the Kantinas on the beach—nothing fabulous.
We left the beach around 4:30 and drove back to the hotel to shower before running into town to buy ferry tickets for when we went to Santorini. We were told we wouldn’t be able to get them in Elounda (our next destination) without having someone come deliver them to us. So we walked into one of the “travel agencies” somewhere in the town of Chania and seemed to disturb the man staring into space at the counter when we asked him to buy tickets. On a scale of not helpful to extremely helpful, he never even qualified. It was quite entertaining.
We went back to the hotel for our last sunset drinks on the roof. We met a couple on the rooftop who told us a bit about Elounda (our next stop on Crete). Then we went to dinner at Glossitses just at the end of the Old Venetian Harbor. This place was tiny, and looked almost no different from the surrounding restaurants, but the food was beyond—it had to be our favorite dinner we’ve had in Crete. Per usual, we ordered tzatziki, pita, baked feta, tomatoes, pepper, and fresh vegetarian dolmas. The dolmas were homemade and unbelievable!!!! We met some Canadians at the table next to us who told us to find a tiny restaurant on Santorini across from a church with “phallic imagery” as they described it.
Saturday morning we woke up at a normal hour went down to the courtyard for breakfast. Today my egg came hard boiled! After breakfast we packed up, got in the car and started our three hour drive to Elounda.
More Observations:
- Every time you sit at a restaurant they bring you table bread, they also charge you for the table bread, so if you don’t plan to eat it, you may want to ask them not to bring it to you.
- Most dolmades are not freshly made, the restaurants buy them from the market because the process to make them is rather time consuming.
- The bills are in Greek 🙂