The 15 kilometre long Samaria Gorge (Europe”s longest) is open for walking.
For the rest of the story on Crete see http://www.CreteTravel.com
And for hotels in Chania where you can stay as a base for walking the Samaria gorge >
Chania Hotels
Venturing beyond Chania’s harbour restaurants – dining in the hills, eating by the beach, restaurants with a view, tavernas on the sea front.
A new batch of inspiring suggestions adds to your chances of enjoying the food of Crete.
Venture outside Chania town and enjoy the scenery, authentic villages and mouth watering treats.
The CreteTravel article spills the beans and reveals the food-fanatic secrets that have been given to the travel consultancy’s own guests >
http://www.cretetravel.com/Chania/Chania.htm – ( scroll to near the bottom of the page for these secret places and look at the rest of the article for Chania town attractions as well )
Happy travels
CHANIA AIRPORT has offered a very large free parking area for the last two years. Further to walk from the terminal, than the paid parking opposite the entrance, but most useful for longer forays away, the area is now reserved for employees only.
In the future ( ! ) there will be a new “long-term” parking area created, but for now this useful patch of tarmac has in effect, vanished.
Icelandair via its “LUCKY FARES” offers email alerts of great deal fares not only to Iceland but to some European cities. Prices are often easily low enough to add paying for another European flight to hop on to say…Athens!
Lufthansa offers LOW fares to several European cities from a few North American gateways.
Both airlines offer email alerts about these special fares on their websites:
- http://www.icelandair.com/
- http://www.lufthansa.com/
Agios Nikolaos is on a beautification binge…smartening the main Eleftherios Venizelos square and approaching roads. Unsightly cables have been committed to below-ground, where they really do belong!
Nykterida – the long-famed restaurant where I would love to be able to say “my great friend and colleague Sir Winston Churchill” (alas we did Not meet ! ) , apparently dined and enjoyed a cigar as usual – still sits aloft Souda bay on the piddly and insufficient road from Chania to the airport.
The restaurant is poised above the water, offering welcome views night and day.
Nykterida’s oven cooked lamb with many supporting ingredients, a rewardingly tasty eggplant dish with hints of bacon, wonderful cold salads, pork rolled with cheese and vegetables, smoked pork, all were healthy, wholesome pleasure. Lubricated with a 2000 Nemea from the boys at Skouras which scores an 8.5 out of ten on my red wines list (rich, without tannin dryness, silky without over suddsiness, fruity without bringing one fruit too much to mind and totally pleasing to mouth and palate) .
Also welcome on a chilly night was that the restaurant had heard of heating and was warm and cosy. Though they need to add this comfort level, I am told, to the ladies toilets which were all about refrigeration !
A simple change that would bring many more welcome visitors and guests to Crete – will be unilateral warmth – cafes and restaurant owners take note – in winter, indoors!
From our view of the snow-coated White Mountains of Crete, to you all over the world with warm wishes and greetings.
A Cretan restaurant we hope to try – Alatsi in Athens.
Using ingredients and recipes from Crete – sounds authentic and tasty – try it and enjoy at Vrasida no.13 near the Hilton hotel (phone 210 721 0501)
Snow fell “all at once” as it always seems to do….much of the country was snow-covered to some degree – including a late-to-work-because-of-the-snow Athens on Tuesday.
Mountains and hilltops over 300 metres were snow covered even in Crete. Crete received months of rain in a night and a day, causing temporary lakes to appear in some parts of Chania while some south and eastern areas saw little of the wet stuff.
Crete has had few rather cold days with daytime temperatures sometimes straining to exceed 6 degrees centigrade. Things, the meteorological soothsayers tell us, will start warming up on Thursday
Perhaps integrity will descend across the land on Friday….! Ho Hum.
Starting by at least June 17 this year, a new “Flying Dolphin” mega-sized Catamaran will come into service offering a 4.5 hour travel time from Chania to Piraeus and vice versa. This is a new route for Hellas Flying Dolphins.
Planned schedule is:
Piraeus-Chania departure at 15.45 hours, arriving Chania at 20.15 hours
Chania-Piraeus departure at 20.45 hours, arriving Piraeus at 01.15 hours (why couldn’t it be at a more civilized time of day, I ask? )
But look at the improvements, the coming of age of travel in Greece…..decent travel times ( and judging by the similar services already existing….higher standards of service).
There will be Economy, Business and VIP class (sign me up for VIP now…) sections.
The daily sailings will accommodate over 800 passengers and 150+ cars.
Prices have not been announced yet…
Check at www.dolphins.gr or our friends at www.ferries.gr in a week or two, for prices.
Of course the guide to Crete http://www.cretetravel.com will have more info as soon as we receive it…or prize it out of Hellas Flying Dolphins! Hi boys…! 
Calypso will soon commense construction. This is to become the largest Sea Park in all Greece.
It will be situated on the north coast of Crete on a large piece of seaside (of course!) land in Souda.
No completion date is yet announced – but if not 2005, then 2006!
During the Olympics and the whole summer Chania and Heraklion have a variety of arts events.
Singled out amongsts many:
Heraklion – Pix Lax (popular and enjoyable even for non-Greek speakers) perform songs on 15 September at the Nikos Katzanzakis Theatre
Chania – dance contest and classic dance and ballet performance on Monday 9 August
More information :
HERAKLION: http://www.heraklion.gr/English/index-en.htm (but be Warned, clicking on “Programme” entails a long, slow, PDF download!)
CHANIA: http://www.chania.gr/events.jsp?lang=en
We travelled on the Blue Star 2 ferry on Friday, July 2.
First impression: it is a new ship, with good, clean, air conditioned areas and nice cafe/restaurants.
BUSY! the Economy class was crowded, which meant that those “air-seats” (pullman seats) were all occupied very quickly. Very soon the rest of the seating areas (including cafes and restaurants) were all full.
The partly-covered deck on the top floor was unappealing and very hot (sailing was at 16:00).
We changed to a cabin (after a long wait at the reception desk – only 1 person serving the many poeple who had requests for cabins), which was of course much more comfortable.
Tip: If you are sailing at a non-busy time (outside July/August and weekends), you might be fine without a cabin – otherwise, it is strongly recommended.
If you can travel at a quieter time, do so; you will also be able to enjoy the sea voyage more. E.g. the cafes have wonderful floor-to-ceiling windows that frame the sea views and we would have enjoyed sitting and gazing at the view, or reading a book during the trip.
But on this trip, everything was full, a little too smoky and the TVs (as on all ships) in the corners were too loud.
The cabins are clean and comfortable, without being exceptional.
The food on the ferry offered a decent variety, an a la carte restaurant, as well as a self service restaurant and snack bars. Drinks and snacks tried were good.
[Note: the price for a small bottle of mineral water was 0.50 euros on the boat, equal to the indicated price on the bottle. There has been a government campaign to keep prices down and it appears to be working. The price is the same as in shops/kiosks in Syntagma and around the Acropolis]
The disembarkation process left something to be desired.
Tip: ignore the calls to surrender your cabin key early and don’t move from your seat too soon. There is a long queue as people start moving towards the reception and exits.
You\’d be better off waiting and be one of the last to disembark, if you don’t want to stand crammed in corridors for half and hour (or more).
Blue Star vs ANEK?
If the Venizelos ferry was still running this route, we would prefer it for style, atmosphere and service.
But the other ANEK ships are old… so we would opt for Blue Star but:
-take a cabin (with window preferably)
-board EARLY
-disembark LATE
Chania, Crete: A smart new marble-clad fountain has become a new landmark at the bottom of the main Halidon Street – the road most travel or walk down, to get to the Venetian Harbour.
In the square at the “corner” of the old harbour, the fountain now splashes and gurgles…and by suggestion cools visitors to the area.
With smart marble surrounds this looks set to become a “meet me at the fountain in Chania” landmark.
As temperatures have been topping 30 degrees celsius for the last 5 days, a toe or two has been pleasantly cooled by the new attraction!