Kissamos, Crete

On Sunday, we arrived at Heraklion Airport in central Crete.  It was about 2 pm and beautiful.  We collected our bags and headed to the SixT counter to pick up our rental car - only to find that since July (we made the reservation and paid for it in May) SixT has required that anyone NOT from a European country have an international drivers license.  This did not make for happy customers!

So, after a long, ridiculous discussion with the woman at SixT’s counter, who insisted that all international car rental companies are now doing this, we went two counters over to the local rental agency and within 10 minutes were out the door with a rental car.

What we hadn’t realized was just how large Crete is.  We asked how far to Kissamos, where our hotel is, and were told 2.5 hours.  WHAT?  Yep, 2.5 hours more to travel.  And when we arrived at our hotel for a 6 night reservation, we found that the room they were putting us in that night was NOT the room we reserved and they would move us to the correct room the next day.  So, Saturday was not our best day of vacation - but we were here and everything was now okay (except for me catching a head cold).  The kid at the front desk told us there was a really great restaurant right around the corner, and he was correct.  We headed over there and had a great meal with beer from a local microbrewery, then settled in for the evening.

Kissamos is in the northwest corner of Crete.  Heraklion is right in the middle - this is one big island. Yesterday was Sunday, and several places were not open...after hearing the 4 times daily Call to Prayer in Istanbul, hearing the church bells yesterday morning at 8 were a bit of a surprise. But pleasant. We had breakfast here at our hotel, then walked around town to get a feel for the area.  Got our 10k steps in that day.  Lee checked out the diving and decided against it - visibility wasn't very good. So, we made our plans for the next day, moved to our correct room, and relaxed.

We got up on Monday and had our typical travel breakfast:  greek yogurt, fruit, and muesli.  Then we took off for Elafonisi Beach - famous for having pink sand.  It was a 1.5 hour drive to southwest Crete. Beautiful but somewhat treacherous roads.  The beach itself was worth the drive and we walked quite a ways around the area.  Difficult to describe, as it meanders around, then crosses to a small sand spit that is maybe 20 feet from the base beat. The Aegean Sea has such an amazing blue color - it is unique.  I feel like Crayola must have a blue called Aegean.  Combine that with red rocks that have been dissolved over centuries to provide the 'pink' tint found along the shore, and the picture is gorgeous.

Had a nice lunch of gyros, then drove back along the west shore of Crete so we could stop at some ruins that are part of a current archeological dig.  Unfortunately, we had to look at them through the fence as they closed 10 minutes before we arrived.  However, there wasn't really much to them, so we moved on to our hotel.  And tomorrow will bring more driving.

Until then, stay safe and sane my friends.