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We enjoyed our meal out in Heraklion so much the other night that we decided to eat in the same restaurant again last night. We got served free doughnut balls with honey and shots of raki again Today was the day we were leaving Crete behind and travelling to our next destination of Rhodes. Before we needed to check out of the apartment at 11, there was just time for one last stroll around Heraklion This little building was opposite the robotic parking where we've been leaving the car, and reminded me a lot of the former mosque we saw in Chania at the start of the week. It was set in a small park, beneath the remains of the town walls. Parts of the town walls and the former gates into the city remain here. You can't walk along a lot of them, but it's possible to climb up and walk along a little bit. There's a good view of Heraklion once you climb up. I could see not only the little church next to our car park... ...but also the main cathedral which we'd been admiring in the city centre. It was starting to look a bit cloudy over the city though, as if the promised storms might materialise. At 11 we checked out, dragged our suitcases to the car park and admired the robotic parking for a final time. Heraklion airport is only a few miles outside the city centre so we didn't have a long journey . Finding out where to hand back our rental car, however, turned out to be difficult! When we picked up the car in Chania on Friday night, we'd been told that there was a proper office for the rental company at Heraklion airport, so we'd assumed that finding the correct place would be straightforward. We managed to find the rental car part of the airport without too much difficulty, but it was complete chaos. We saw signs for dozens of different small car rental companies, but not the one we were looking for. At one point, as we drove around looking for it, a Greek man started shouting at us. We assumed initially that he was telling us off for driving the wrong way around the car park (although, no one else seemed to be adhering to any rules of the road!). Eventually it became clear that it wasn't that; he was trying to explain that we were driving the wrong way for our company and we should be in a different section of the car park. We found the right place in the end, although there was no one there from the rental company. There was a small hut with a flap to post keys through though, so in the end we did that and assumed it would be fine. They hadn't held any deposit on our credit card, so we didn't actually need to speak to anyone. We were at the airport a bit too early to check in for our flight, so went to the airport cafe to get a snack for lunch. We were flying to Rhodes with a Greek airline called Sky Express. When planning the holiday initially, I'd wanted to get a ferry from Crete to Rhodes, but travelling between Greek islands is actually quite difficult. Each island is well-connected to Athens, but generally quite poorly connected to any other island. Theoretically there was a ferry between Crete and Rhodes but it didn't seem to be possible to buy tickets for it in advance and there was some suggestion that the ferry company might go bust. In the end I decided to give up on the idea and just book a flight instead. Despite being at the airport with plenty of time to spare, we almost managed to miss our flight. Heraklion turned out to be quite a cramped airport and we ended up sitting several gates away from where we needed to be. A couple of other flights were announced over the tannoy when they started boarding so we assumed ours would be too. With about 20 minutes to go until it was due to take off, I started to get concerned that it hadn't been called. We could see the Sky Express plane from where we were sitting and at that point we looked at it and realised that people were starting to board. A short jog later and we just managed to make it through before the final call finished! The plane to Rhodes was fairly small, with just two seats on either side of the aisle. Compared to the plane we flew to Alderney on earlier this year it qualified as huge, though. The flight to Rhodes only took an hour and before we knew it we were landing at the island's main airport. We retrieved our bags and went to pick up our new rental car, a blue Citroen C3. Then we had a short drive of around 20 minutes or so to the village of Faliraki where we're staying. Faliraki is a place that used to have a very bad reputation as a party town, but I think it's long since stopped being a "cool" place to go and is trying to reinvent itself. We're staying a bit outside of it anyway, so I don't think we're going to be troubled by any rowdy behaviour. We've got a studio apartment with a kitchen/dining area plus bedroom on the ground floor... ...plus unexpected second bedroom on the floor above. Most excitingly, when we open the back door we've got our own outdoor area, complete with little pool. Once we'd settled in we set off to explore a little bit of Faliraki. There's a sandy beach here and we could just make out some sort of small fortress on the hill behind it. In the other direction was a small harbour. We could just make out what looked like some very large, multi-storey hotels on the other side of the bay. There was a beautiful little church down by the harbour. We found a restaurant by the sea to have dinner. Tim had spaghetti and I went for pasticcio again. It was really good! On the way back to the apartment we got a glimpse of the local church, illuminated at night. So far Rhodes seems nice and we're looking forward to exploring more of it tomorrow!

After I'd finished the blog last night we walked into Heraklion in search of food. We ended up finding a lovely restaurant next to a small church, where we shared a mixed grill. At the end of the meal they brought us complimentary doughnut balls, as well as shots of a spirit called "raki" which seemed pretty similar to Croatian rakija. As we walked back towards the apartment afterwards we had some lovely views of some of the monuments we'd seen yesterday lit up at night. Our plan for today was to visit another archaeological site: Phaistos. First step was to walk to the car park and retrieve the rental car from the robotic parking again. This is what parking the car looked like yesterday... ...and this is what retrieving it looked like today! Fortunately, all worked well again and we were soon on our way, negotiating the chaotic traffic out of Heraklion. Phaistos is located nearer to the southern coast of Crete than the northern one, so our route took us through mountainous countryside. There were potentially more storms forecast for today and we could certainly see low cloud over some of the mountains. We arrived at Phaistos after an hour or so of driving and purchased our entry tickets. It was €8 each to get in. We then began walking up from the car park towards the archaeological site. I was impressed to see large cactuses growing alongside the path. Once we reached the top we had our first view of the ruins. Like Knossos, Phaistos is also a Bronze Age site. It's believed to have been inhabited since 3600 BC. The site was discovered in the late 19th century, although not excavated until the 20th. If we thought information about what we were looking at was poor at Knossos, it was even worse at Phaistos. There wasn't even a map, so we were just wandering around, trying to see what we could find. These seems to be the remains of rooms in the palace. Anything valuable was covered by a roof to protect it from the sun; in this case, remains of original pillars. It looked like maybe there had been some sort of drainage system here. We found more pillars here and some faint remains of colour on the wall behind. Unlike Knossos, Phaistos hasn't been restored and repainted. As we hadn't got here at the crack of dawn, there were a few more tourists around than there had been at Knossos. But still not a lot. This site definitely doesn't seem to be as popular with tourists, although after Knossos I think it was the second most important Minoan palace. It's set in a beautiful location, with views of the mountains on all sides. And some views of cactuses too! Eventually we came around to a large open area, which was the central courtyard of the palace. There were lots more little rooms and pathways off here to explore. I completely missed it initially, but Tim spotted these ancient pots hidden away. They looked really old! From here our route led us to the ancient theatre. We caught sight of some more pots, sheltered by a roof. And then we began to make our way back towards the entrance. The day had brightened up a bit by this point and the mountains weren't so cloudy. It was still really hot! We drove back to Heraklion to cool off, have a late lunch and try out the hot tub again

We had a comparatively early start to the day today, with it still being dark when my alarm went off at 06.30. While I wouldn't normally choose to get up at that time on holiday, it felt like a good decision today because we were planning to visit the archaeological site of Knossos. Knossos is certainly one of the most visited tourist attractions in Crete, if not in the whole of Greece, and I'd read online about people standing for hours in queues to get in in the middle of the day. That sounded like no fun at all to us, so we planned to be there as soon as the site opened at 8am. Knossos is only a few miles from the centre of Heraklion where we are staying, so in theory it ought to have been a straightforward journey. But first of all we had to walk to the robotic parking, with our fingers crossed that our rental car was going to reappear in one piece! This is the turntable which you drive the car onto when you arrive... ...and here is our car happily emerging from a lift after we recalled it by scanning our parking ticket at the machine. Phew! It only cost €5 to park it overnight, which wasn't too bad. All that then remained was to negotiate the rush hour traffic out of Heraklion. It wasn't the most fun in the world, the usual bad driving being exacerbated by the fact that we were clashing with the school run, but we made it to Knossos for shortly after 8am. There were no queues at that time of the morning, but I'd already booked our tickets online in advance to be on the safe side, so we were able to walk straight into the site. Knossos is a Bronze Age archaeological site, often referred to as the oldest city in Europe. A large palace was built here by a civilisation called the Minoans, originally around the year 1900 BC. They lived here for around five centuries, before mysteriously disappearing in circumstances which aren't fully understood. It's thought that Knossos might have been destroyed by an earthquake, which Crete is prone to from time to time. The site was discovered and excavated in the early 20th century by a British archaeologist called Arthur Evans. His work here was controversial, because he reconstructed and restored Knossos based on his vision of what it would have looked like. These frescoes, for example, have obviously been repainted. They were fascinating to see though! We had definitely had the right idea to come early; at this time of the morning we were able to explore the site with almost nobody else around. As we made our way towards the central court, which connects different parts of the palace to one another, there was barely any other tourists visible. From here we were able to peer down into ancient rooms with colourful decorations. This is the grand staircase which leads down to the rooms below. As we peered over we could see that the site is really deep and there were several different storeys. Still not many other people around! Our next stop was the Throne Room. I'd read online that in high season you might have to queue for an hour to be able to get inside. We walked straight in! I was a little underwhelmed by the wooden throne to the side until I realised that was a reconstruction, and the real throne was in the room beyond. There were some beautiful frescoes in this room too. Outside again, we got a glimpse of probably the most photographed part of Knossos: the north entrance. This is where visitors coming to Knossos by sea would have entered the palace, via a road leading up from the harbour. The wall here is decorated with an amazing fresco of a charging bull. A bull is particularly appropriate for Knossos, because according to Greek legend the palace was the home of the labyrinth that held the minotaur. Still can't believe we managed to take all these photos and have the place to ourself (If you do an image search for "crowds at Knossos", you'll see what I mean! One of the slightly frustrating things about the site is that there isn't a lot of information to tell you what you're looking at. There was a map at the point we entered and a few info boards scattered around, but no explanations of the site's history or helpful arrows to tell you which way to go next. I caught sight of these pots just by accident. I suspect the lack of information is in some way deliberate. In order to get into Knossos, you have to walk through a small crowd of guides who want to sell you their services. I think we managed to see a lot, even without having a guide. Even if we weren't always sure exactly what we were looking at! As we began to come back round in a circle towards the entrance, we could see that the tour buses had started to arrive for the day. Sure enough, once we got back to the car park there were six coaches already in place and a seventh about to arrive. I'm so glad I managed to get out of bed and beat them to it With our sightseeing done we headed back towards Heraklion, where I spent some time enjoying the sun-lounger on our terrace. We also tried out the hot tub for the first time. We definitely had the best of the weather in the morning too, as mid-afternoon the promised thunder storms arrived and we had some rain. It seems to have cleared up a bit now, so we're going off into the centre of Heraklion to get some food

It was another lovely sunny day when we woke up this morning, despite the weather forecast threatening rain later this week. We had time for another breakfast on the balcony in Kalyves before we needed to think about checking out. We really loved the place where we were staying, but it was time to move on to our next destination: Heraklion. We couldn't check in to our apartment there until after 3pm, so we weren't in any particular rush to arrive. Heraklion is only about two hours away from Chania by car, on a fast road along Crete's northern coast. So that we didn't arrive too early, I planned for us to stop at Lake Kournas, about half an hour into our journey. Lake Kournas is notable for being the only freshwater lake on the island of Crete. The perimeter of the lake is only about 3.5km, so it's not exactly huge. It is a pretty lake, though; the colour of the water was particularly attractive. There isn't a footpath around the entire lake, but there is a trail around part of it and we followed it as far as it went. There's a sandy beach on this side of the lake and it's quite commercialised, with lots of people renting out pedaloes. We decided to give that a miss and concentrate on enjoying the views. Once we'd walked as far as we could around the lake, we stopped off at a nearby taverna for lunch. We just had a glimpse of the water from where we were sitting. I opted for pastitsio again, while Tim had a spaghetti bolognaise. We also had pudding: I chose a chocolate crepe... ...while Tim was healthier and went for yoghurt with honey and walnuts. After lunch we drove the final hour and a half towards Heraklion. Heraklion is Crete's biggest city - and the fifth biggest city in Greece, in fact - so driving into it was a bit of a challenge. It doesn't compare with driving into Athens, which is definitely one of life's more terrifying experiences, but it was a maze of tiny little streets with crazy driving. Unfortunately, the place we're staying in doesn't come with parking. I thought it did when I booked (because I filtered on "parking" on booking.com), but no sooner had I made a reservation than I received a message giving me a link to a couple of car parks I could try. Bit frustrating! We navigated our way to one of the suggested car parks anyway, which was a bit unusual because it describes itself as "robotic parking". You drive the car onto platform, taking care to position it correctly, and then ultimately the platform gets lifted up and the car is suspended in its storage location! That was only about a 10-minute walk from the place where we're staying, and the good news is that it's a really lovely apartment. We've got a big kitchen area... ...plus a sitting area with bed behind. We've also got a fantastic outdoor area with a double sun-lounger and bean bags to sit on. There even appears to be a hot tub Once we'd settled in we set out to explore a bit of Heraklion. The first impressive building that we came to was the Agios Minas Cathedral. The cathedral is named after St Minas, the patron saint of Heraklion. From there we progressed to the Morosini fountain, which stands in the city's main square. This building doesn't look too impressive, but it's St Mark's Basilica, a Catholic church that was built in Heraklion by the Venetians. The Ottomans later turned it into a mosque and today it's an art gallery. This pretty church is the cathedral of St Titus. This one was built as a mosque and only converted into a church in 1925. Eventually we caught sight of the sea at the end of the road. And once we got to the sea, we could see the Koules Fortress. This is a Venetian fortress, which was built in the 16th century. The walls of the fortress looked really beautiful against the bright blue sky. We could see as we looked in the other direction that it was getting a bit cloudier over the mountains, though. There's some rain forecast later in the week. There were some big ships in the port here, including one that looked like a cruise ship. We'd walked quite a long way out on Heraklion's pier by this point. As we turned around to walk back into the city, we had an amazing view of the sun starting to set over the mountains. It's been another fun day in Crete and we're looking forward to exploring more of this side of the island over the next few days

Tim had a couple of online exams to sit this morning, so while he was doing that I walked down to Kalyves for another stroll by the sea. It was an incredibly hot day again today; so much warmer than I expected for the end of September. I walked around by the harbour, from where I had a nice view back to the main church in the centre of town. The mountains beyond the town looked gorgeous in the morning sunshine. As I walked along the coast in the opposite direction, I got a glimpse of the hilltop fortress which we'd seen from Aptera yesterday too. Once the exams had been successfully passed, we jumped in the car and drove along the coast to the little town of Rethymno, which is only about 45 minutes away from where we're staying. We managed to find some free parking, right by the sea. In the other direction we caught sight of Rethymno's Venetian fortress. We walked towards it to get a better look. It was really huge, towering above us on a rock. I particularly loved the fact that there were cactuses growing all the way up the fortress rock. Eventually we made it round towards the centre of town. We stopped for some lunch at a cafe with an amazing view of the sea. After lunch we had a stroll through the picturesque streets of Rethymno. The town seemed to be a mixture of old and new. It hasn't come out very well in the picture, but this building had an Arabic inscription above the door, presumably a legacy of Ottoman rule. We found our way to what seemed to be the town's main church, complete with large bell tower. From here we followed little streets down to the sea. By the sea we found a huge Rethymno sign. It seems to be a local recycling initiative, with people encouraged to fill the letters with plastic bottles. I enjoyed walking under palm trees by the beach. As we walked we could see the town's lighthouse in the distance. The old harbour here is Venetian, although the lighthouse looks newer. The harbour itself is really pretty Once we'd finished exploring we walked back around past the fortress and towards where we'd parked the car. Rethymno was a lovely little place to visit, but with temperatures over 30 degrees again today we were glad to get back to the air-conditioning of the apartment to cool off for a while!

It was a beautiful bright sunny day when we woke up this morning. We had breakfast sitting on our balcony, enjoying the amazing view of the sea. The aim for today was to do a bit of a road trip around the western part of Crete. Our first stop was Aptera, an archaeological site not far from where we're staying. We were expecting to have to pay four euros each to get in, but for some reason it was free today. There weren't very many other people there when we arrived, which meant we had this theatre all to ourselves. To be honest, the theatre was probably the highlight of Aptera; it was a pleasant place to walk around but there weren't loads of ruins to see. We enjoyed looking at a beautiful little white church... ...and we got a view of what looked like a fortress in the distance... ...but I don't think the ruins themselves are going to win any prizes compared to some of the other historical sites we're hoping to see on this trip. What was really fantastic at Aptera were the views of the mountains. The interior of Crete really is very mountainous and this was a good location from which to admire it. After Aptera we jumped back in the car and drove west, towards a place that seemed to appear on every list of must-see sights in Crete: Falassarna beach. Falassarna has apparently been voted not just the best beach in Crete, but also one of the best beaches in Europe. It is a very sandy beach, but we weren't really that impressed! It was extremely busy and covered in paid sun loungers; not like some of the amazingly remote sandy beaches we've been to in the Hebrides! Admittedly, the weather is better in Crete and the sea was an amazing shade of blue We had a quick drink of water and then got back in the car to continue our road trip. The route took us back up into the mountains and the views of the sea from here were fantastic. We made an unscheduled stop at a viewpoint when we noticed goats by the side of the road. There were so many of them! And plenty of sheep too. The goats in particular were quite brave, just wandering across the road whenever they felt like it... ...before jumping up to safety. It was a viewpoint well worth stopping at for the views of the sea too. Both the sea and the sky were perfectly blue Our route continued to take us through the mountains. As we began to loop back around towards Chania the countryside was surprisingly green in places. We stopped for lunch with a lovely view in a taverna by the side of the road, which was deserted except for us and a local cat. We both had chicken souvlaki, which came with chips and some gorgeous pitta bread. Then we headed back to the apartment, where I enjoyed sitting in the air conditioning for a bit; it was very hot today! Once the weather had cooled down a bit, it was time to venture out for a little stroll around the village of Kalyves. There's a small beach here too and a little seaside promenade. I loved the view of the mountains behind the town... ...and also this absolutely tiny chapel right by the sea. The main church in the middle of town is much bigger! We've had a fun day today exploring some different parts of Crete. I think we've probably managed to see some bits which most other people on our flight won't have

We were a bit restricted in when we could go on a late summer holiday this year, with Tim's study commitments in Poznan falling in mid-September. When I was trying to find places which might still have good weather in late September and early October, I kept coming back to one destination: Greece. We'd had a really good trip to Athens back in autumn 2018, as well as a very warm trip to Cyprus in autumn 2019, so it felt like this part of the world might be a good choice at this time of year. I was still trying to get value out of the final dregs of my pandemic EasyJet vouchers and in the end I managed to successfully utilise them on two flights to Crete. Crete caught my attention because it is one of the largest islands in the Mediterranean; the fifth largest, in fact, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus and Corsica. That was good, because it felt like we could spend a reasonable amount of time there, perhaps doing some sort of road trip. Going to a sunny destination just to sit on the beach isn't our sort of holiday! For some reason a lot of flights to Greece seem to take off in the late afternoon and early evening, arriving in Greece in the middle of the night. So we ended up with flights to Chania, Crete's second city, taking off from Gatwick at 17.05 on Friday afternoon. Getting to Gatwick for that sort of time is slightly stressful, as you never quite know what the traffic on the M25 is going to be like. In the end it took us slightly longer than I'd anticipated and by the time we'd made it to the airport parked, parked and caught the bus to the airport, we only had about 90 minutes to go before our flight. That was plenty of time to get through bag drop and security, neither of which seemed particularly busy, but possibly not enough time to get any food before the flight. We were flying from the north terminal at Gatwick and it was absolutely rammed, with no free seats anywhere and queues outside all the restaurants. There was only 15 minutes until our gate was supposed to be announced so we didn't think we had time to queue anywhere... until the departures board announced our flight was delayed and there would be gate information at 17.38. And so began the mystery delay! Over the course of the next few hours we had multiple reasons why the flight wasn't on time. The EasyJet app sent me a push notification to apologise and say it was due to an air traffic control restriction delaying the incoming aircraft. Once we ultimately got to the gate, airport staff made a not very audible announcement explaining that we were waiting for a new crew, who still had to go through security checks at the airport. Once we were eventually on the plane, about two hours later than scheduled, the pilot said that we'd been delayed because they'd been waiting for water to be delivered to the plane. All in all a bit baffling! Never mind, the delay had at least enabled us to get some dinner at Wetherspoons. And I'd used the time while we were waiting to message the car rental company and the hotel we were staying at to let them know that we were going to be late. I was crossing my fingers and really hoping they were going to wait up for us, because with the two hour time difference in Greece we were already due to be arriving quite late. The scheduled arrival time was 23.00 and now it looked more like being 01.00 on Saturday morning! The flight time to Crete is around four hours and I think it would have been a spectacular flight if it hadn't been pitch black. The pilot explained at one point that we were flying over Zadar in Croatia, then down the Adriatic coast towards Albania and across to Greece. We also had some unexpected in-flight entertainment when, half an hour into the flight, someone from the row in front of us went to have a smoke in the one of the plane's toilets. An alarm went off, there was a great commotion with flight attendants running backwards and forwards and the man in question got a stern telling off, having to give his passport details to the crew. He was then a model passenger for the next two hours or so.... at which point a flight attendant had to come and confiscate the bottle of duty-free spirits he'd been working his way through! I was slightly worried at this point that we were about to turn into one of those stories you see on the news about flights being diverted to random places because of unruly passengers! Luckily that didn't happen and we landed safely in Chania, some time around 1am. Passport control was pretty brief, with staff stamping our passports but not asking questions about our itinerary. While we were waiting for the baggage I realised I had a missed call from a Greek number on my phone. I rang it back and it turned out to be the hotel, saying that they couldn't wait for us any longer but were going to send self check-in instructions to me via Whatsapp. Phew! I had chosen the accommodation because 24 check-in was supposed to be possible, but it was still a relief to know we were definitely going to be able to get into the accommodation. Now we just had to wait and see whether car rental people would still be waiting for us. The good news is that they were! As soon as we stepped out into arrivals, I caught sight of a man holding a sign with Tim's name on. He directed us to a small Fiat Panda and proceeded to drive us a few minutes up the road to the office of the car rental company. Or, rather, the car park of the car rental company. We then sat down at a table outside while he filled out a rental contract by hand, using the light of his phone. After a negative experience with car hire in Mallorca last year, I'd done a lot of research before booking anything in Crete and chosen a company who sounded like they were going to be pretty relaxed. That turned out to be the case. The man said he didn't need to hold any excess on Tim's credit card, advised us on how to avoid getting caught by the local speed cameras and told us that we weren't allowed to drive the car off road, but that if we did to be careful and drive slowly because it's a low car! He also gave us directions for getting onto the main road which was really helpful, and we were soon on our way towards the seaside town of Kalyves where we are staying. Initially the plan was to stay in Chania itself, but when I was trying to find accommodation I struggled to locate anything that looked like it had decent parking. Kalyves is only about 15 miles down the road from Chania so we didn't have a long journey, and luckily we found the accommodation without any difficulty. Self check-in was easy, with our keys just left in the door for us. The apartment itself looked basic, but comfortable. It was 3am Greek time by this point, so we went straight to bed! When we woke up on Saturday morning, we discovered we had a large balcony with an incredible view of the sea. Breakfast at the hotel had seemed a bit expensive (£20 each) so I hadn't booked it. We walked into the village of Kalyves for some pastries, which we ate on the balcony with a coffee. It was a nice relaxed start to the day. By the time we'd finished breakfast it was already boiling hot. I covered myself in sun cream and then we got in the car to drive towards Chania. Parking in Chania was a bit of a challenge but we eventually found a parking garage and made our way down towards the harbour. I didn't know anything about Chania before I started planning this trip, but it's a really beautiful place. The city had a period of Venetian rule followed by a period of Ottoman rule, which has left it with an interesting mix of architecture. We walked around the old harbour, which was built by the Venetians in the 14th century. One of the most striking buildings in the harbour is this former Ottoman mosque, built in 1645. It's hard to convey in photos but the harbour is huge and takes quite a long time to walk around. We were heading out towards Chania lighthouse, which was built in 1864 on the site of an original Venetian lighthouse. The lighthouse sticks out quite far into the sea. As we walked out towards it, we had some fantastic views back towards the town... ...including some great views back towards the mosque. Crete looks really mountainous away from the coast! At last, we got to the lighthouse! On the walk back there were some more great views of the town and we spotted what looks like the minaret of another mosque in the distance. We found a really nice restaurant in the harbour to have lunch. I had pastitsio, which is a Greek variation on the theme of lasagne (made with macaroni rather than sheets of pasta). I can't remember the name of Tim's dish, but they tasted a bit like ćevapi in a tomato sauce. Really good! We ordered a coffee at the end of the meal and were given complimentary little pink cakes and shots of a very sweet wine. I was suspicious that we might end up actually getting charged for them, but we didn't! Then it was time to negotiate the chaotic Chania traffic and drive back to Kalvyes. After yesterday's rather tiring day of travel, we had a relaxing evening. I spent some time reading on a sun lounger on the terrace, before going for a drink at the pool bar. Tomorrow we're hoping to see a bit more of Crete, but today has been a really nice introduction