Jason asked me how Greece was while chatting on MSN yesterday - honestly it's great. Great feta cheese, olives, perfectly clear water, wonderful sun with a refreshing breeze, and lots and lots of kittens. Not kidding, they're everywhere! I've realised while typing this that the photo galery is seriously lacking with the cuteness (apart from Chris) and will attempt to rectify this on the way home.
Before we left I promised friends and relatives a travel blog but i feel this will be rather underposted to. We've spent the past week in Palaeochora being horribly lazy. Initially we arrived here after a four hour flight from Gatwick airport in London - honestly, I have no idea where that airport actually was but in London is bloody well is not. After flying into Chania airport we hopped into a taxi and headed to the bus station; it appears that the airport only has 4 bus services a day so if we wanted to get anywhere a taxi is the only option. Chania town itself reminded Chris and I a lot of Cambodia, vey dusty, hot, and lots of very brown people. Initially we were going to see what we felt like doing when we got to Chania, but after the initial *city* feel we decided to bus it down to Palaeochora. After a week of London we both felt the need for a slower pace.
Arriving in Palaeochora was a wonderful affair as the majority of the bus trip consised of winding mountain roads with hairpin turns (or so says Chris as I was passed out drooling on the seat). We planned to camp just out of town at the only camp site, and i remembered from flicking through Lonely Planet guide that it was approx 1.5k out of town but as I didn't have any maps or frankly any bloody clue when stepping off the bus we just wandered down the street and came across a sign pointing down the road for Camping Palaeochora. Win! A few days later on inspecting the town I must give kudos to the Camping team as it doesn't matter which direction you wander off from the bus stop, you run into a sign pointing you the right direction by the end of the block.
To sum up a very sweaty walk, we got to the camp site after about 20 minutes - it was located in a suprisingly shady area on the eastern side of the town next to a pebble beach with a wonderful view of the Croc head and Ive posted some photos of the view from the beach and the Camping Restaraunt. Great location. The first night was okay, but the second night the wind kicked up something shocking and after waking up about twenty times during the night with the tent so bowed in from the wind it was whacking us on the head we decided that we might want to enquire in town as to how much accom was.
Turns out accom is pretty affordable since we came in at the end of the season - pretty much every other house in town has hotel/studio/apartment/vacancy signs up out the front and after asking around we settled on a nice new studio apartment with a double bed and private bathroom with kitchen for EU$40 a night. Bearing in mind I was still pretty bloody sick at this time (I caught some Australia death-plague the day before we left oz, but we won't talk about that - I'm still trying to repress it all) the aircon and heavy curtains were a blessing. Much deep sleep was had by all. Also the fact that the apartment was right opposite the beach was amazing. Chris spent today jumping off the rocks into the crystal clear ocean while i paddled around giggling at the multitude of fish that would swarm around me and nibble on my fingers if i stayed still enough.
Palaeochora is beautiful, and I'm going to miss it here. We head off tomorrow to treck to Heraklion via bus the catch the ferry to Santorini. We were planning on heading up the coast via ferry to Loutro and then Sweetwater beach, but as we've stayed a few extra days here we don't really have time - that and the Canadian 70s Doomsday Dude (he's another story altogether) says that Sweetwater has a whole heap of people there, so the idylic beach might not be what we were hoping it to be. Plus I think I've killed a few of Dad's pristene memories of Palaeochora with my photos as it is, so I'll just leave Sweetwater alone.
Sayonara for now - I'm off to get me some kittens!
