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Quite a long journey to Crete from Sicily - 3 flights taking all day on Thursday so we were exhausted by the time we arrived in Chania airport and took the taxi 40 mins to our "home" for the next 2 weeks in Kokkina Chorio (red village - so named due to the red roof tiles) which is the house swap that I arranged.
This area appears to be "Little England" and almost totally inhabited by retired English people. It is a small village with a mini market for basic staples, a church, a taverna and not much more but has some historical significance with regard to having some caves where the Germans constructed mines with many tunnels during WW2 and a watch tower where they watched over the whole of Souda Bay. The village is also famous for being included in the film Zorba the Greek.
Just outside the village, about 5 mins walk from the house is a glass blowing factory where all the locals deposit their glass containers for recycling. The artists there make the most amazing glassware totally out of recycled glass. There is also a lovely cafe/taverna there under shade of a grape vine covered terrace (still heavily laden with black grapes) where we will have dinner one of these evenings when it is nice to sit outside. The weather is a little cooler now in the evenings but days are still nice and warm and sunny.
Friday was a rest day where we caught up on the washing, etc. and Saturday we ventured off to Rethymnon just over half an hour away - still on north west coast - and managed to not get lost. Fortunately we have a fairly reliable "bible" left by the owners here and we will ensure we do not leave home without it. We visited the Fortress and walked through the old town stopping for lunch of moussaka and greek salad at a little taverna on the way. Not much else to see so we headed home stopping off at The Pear Tree in Almyrida - a beachside village closeby - which is a nice store to stock up on some local produce including some thyme honey, fresh figs, walnuts and feta which we enjoyed with some local wine (around $6 a bottle) while watching a couple of DVDs - not much English TV around here.
Sunday - we have just returned from a drive around all the villages in this area of Apokoronous. We had a nice lunch at a local taverna in Vamos which is on a fairly steep hill above the ocean. After our lat experience we have now learned to ask how the vegetables are prepared ie no deep fried veges as we had onour first night which left us both feeling not the best. We also stopped and walked around Georgiopouli , another beach not too far away on the ocean which is almost totally occupied by English people to the extent that it hardly looks Greek, it looks more like Bali with all the modern villas and hotels as well as bicycles and scooters.
Crete is generally much more mountainous than I had expected and there are parts when we leave the mountain and drive down the tight winding roads down to the ocean that it is just like driving around Cape Point in South Africa - also similar looking vegetation except this area is very rocky and full of olive trees but from a distance it looks much like the Cape.
Tomorrow we are heading off to Chania to explore the second largest town in Crete and try to book a trip to Santorini for this coming week for a few days.
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